Engineering Student Team Advances in National First Responder Tracking Competition

Team Zot<1M’s foot sensor is programmed to produce real-time information about the wearer’s position, so first responders can see their exact latitude and longitude on a smartphone display.

Nov. 8, 2022, Update: UCI’s team ZOT<1M has completed and passed phase three of the NIST-sponsored First Responder Smart Tracking (FRST) Challenge. They’ve received a cash prize of $44,000 and are among only 10 remaining competitors who will move on to phase four, which will involve a live field test at a facility in Indiana.

Aug. 16, 2022 - A team of UCI Samueli School of Engineering graduate students called Zot<1M is one of 25 recipients to be named a winner of phase two of the First Responder Smart Tracking (FRST) Challenge. Hosted by Indiana University’s Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab, the FRST Challenge is a national competition focused on creating life-saving indoor tracking technologies for first responders. 

Current tracking techniques for first responders are simple but reliable, explained Chi-Shih “Chico” Jao, mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate student and team Zot<1M leader. Typically, first responders follow fire hoses back to the exit or attach a lifeline to themselves before entering a building. 

“There are drawbacks to this approach, however, because the current techniques do not allow you to report the numerical position,” said Jao. “When you’re inside a building, you don’t know which floor you are on; these pieces of information are critical for firefighters. If the incident commanders have this information, the responsive strategies can be quicker and more adaptive. Our team is aiming to build such a system that is accurate and reliable, even when operating in extreme environmental scenarios.”

Zot<1M is reimagining indoor navigation technology through foot-mounted inertial navigation with the goal of achieving one-meter accuracy, hence the team name. In dangerous firefighting scenarios, visibility is low and GPS signals are not strong enough to reach indoors. Inertial navigation, however, doesn’t depend on external signals. 

The team includes mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate students Danmeng Wang and Changwei Chen, as well as several industry representatives, and is supervised by Andrei Shkel, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Zot<1M’s work is a continuation of ongoing research in Shkel’s MicroSystems Lab that began in 2017 when he wrote proposals for “The Ultimate Navigation Chip Project (uNavChip)” to the Public Safety Communication Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 

“The problem our research is trying to solve is fundamental and has important practical implications," said Shkel. "Just imagine, how do you know your location at all times, even when a GPS signal is not available? My research group at UCI has been looking for a possible technological solution for over 20 years. The Zot<1M team now has an opportunity to demonstrate the UCI technology in action. I admire the creative work of our graduate students and I’m very proud that the team is on its way to the grand prize of the FRST Challenge competition.”

The project revolves around a navigation chip the size of an apple seed placed in the sole of a person’s shoe. The chip is inserted in the shoe because of an algorithm the researchers used called the “zero update velocity algorithm,” which classifies the motion of feet into a stance phase and a swing phase. 

“The stance phase is basically the period when your foot is touching the ground, and this period has very critical information,” Jao said. “The velocity of the foot is very close to zero, so we are able to use this additional information to limit the error growth of the inertial navigation system.” 

Chi-Shih “Chico” Jao and his Zot<1M team conceptualize their inertial navigation system by mapping a path on the UCI campus.

Jao, who developed the project’s algorithms and integrated systems prototype, worked on multiple advanced sensing modalities like inertial measurement units, ultrasonic transducers and event-based cameras in Shkel’s lab. According to Jao, each of these sensors measure different physical quantities, and designing a system that combines them via sensor fusion approaches so measurements collectively produce accurate and robust positioning solutions is a state-of-the-art research area. Jao appreciates Shkel for his guidance in identifying research questions and exploring futuristic concepts of next-generation technologies. 

The competition is divided into five phases with varying prizes distributed at each phase. Zot<1M plans on investing a majority of the $30,000 prize they received in equipment, such as sensors and circuit boards, needed to build better 3D tracking technology for firefighters. 

The team will move on to phase three of the competition where 10 winners will be selected. The FRST Challenge is set to conclude in October 2023. A total of $5.6 million will be awarded to winning teams throughout the five phases of the competition. 

“When I joined the lab in 2018 and I was introduced to the project, I knew this would be a very difficult problem to solve,” Jao said. “Winning this competition has been so rewarding. I think this has given us the additional confidence and motivation to continue working on this research because in the lab, sometimes it feels like not many other people are aware of what we’re doing because we are still in the very preliminary stage of our results. With this competition, I believe the publicity will increase, so this is very exciting and I feel happy and honored to be part of this journey.”

– Yuika Yoshida