Ferdinand Packi

	Dipl.-Inform. Research Assistant
	Address:	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics Building 50.20 Room 124 Adenauerring 2 D-76131 Karlsruhe
	Walk-in hours:	on arrangement
	Phone:	+49-721-608-45291
	E-mail:	Ferdinand.Packi@kit.edu

Academic Career

since 01/2013	Research Scientist at Locating and Communication Systems Department, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS), Erlangen (Germany).
!!! NEW !!!	Phone +49 911 58061-3226 ferdinand.packi@iis.fraunhofer.de
10/2009 - 04/2012	Research Assistant at the Intelligent Sensor-Actuator-Systems Lab, Department of Computer Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
02/2009 - 07/2009	Graduation as Dipl.-Inform., University of Karlsruhe (TH), diploma thesis at the Intelligent Sensor-Actuator-Systems Lab: "Design and Implementation of an Embedded, Wireless, Acoustic Tracking System".

Research Interests

• Signal Processing
• Localization and Tracking
• Embedded Systems Design
• Robotics

Teaching

• Supervising tutor of the laboratory Science Project: Pedestrian Tracking Using Multisensor-Supported Dead Reckoning im summer term 2012

• Supervising tutor of the laboratory Science Project: Acoustic Tracking in Non-convex Indoor Environments im winter term 2011/12

• Supervising tutor of the laboratory Science Project: Acoustic Tracking with Variable Landmarks im summer term 2011

• Supervisor of the laboratory Natural Interaction in Telepresent Environments as part of the Software Development Laboratory in summer term 2011]

• Supervisor of the laboratory Development of a Telepresent Computer Game as part of the Software Development Laboratory in winter term 2010/11]

• Supervisor of the laboratory Development of an Editor for Handwritten Text as part of the Software Development Laboratory in summer term 2010] and winter term 2009/10]

If your are interested in seminar theses, laboratory or bachelor/master theses, feel free to contact me or just drop into my office any time!

Activities

• International Conference on Information Fusion 2012, Singapore
  • Co-organizer of the Special Session "Data Fusion Methods for Indoor Localization of People and Objects "

Bachelor/MasterTheses

• Indoor Navigation and Tracking

Publications

Ferdinand Packi, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Robust NLOS Discrimination for Range-Based Acoustic Pose Tracking Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2012), Singapore, July 2012. Author : Ferdinand Packi, Uwe D. Hanebeck Editor : Title : Robust NLOS Discrimination for Range-Based Acoustic Pose Tracking In : Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2012) Address : Singapore Date : July 2012 Abstract Indoor localization is a field in research with many competing technologies using different kinds of media. A common challenge faced by most systems is dealing with Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions. We are addressing this issue with focus on sound in the frequency range above 20 kHz, as we encountered severe occurrence of outliers due to multipath propagation, by reflections, and from occlusion. The proper discrimination of erroneous signals is of special concern during initialization time of the tracking system. During run time, the computationally demanding process can be spared, if motion is modelled and stochastic filtering techniques are applied. This paper depicts solutions for both cases, and demonstrates that a combined use of static and dynamic localization methods delivers increased robustness at an affordable computational cost.

Ferdinand Packi, Antonia Pérez Arias, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck, A Wearable System for the Wireless Experience of Extended Range Telepresence Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010), Taipei, Taiwan, October 2010. Author : Ferdinand Packi, Antonia Pérez Arias, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck Editor : Title : A Wearable System for the Wireless Experience of Extended Range Telepresence In : Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010) Address : Taipei, Taiwan Date : October 2010 Abstract Extended range telepresence aims at enabling a user to experience virtual or remote environments, taking his own body movements as an input to define walking speed and viewing direction. Therefore, localization and tracking of the users pose (position and orientation) is necessary to perform a body-centered scene rendering. Visual and acoustic feedback is provided to the user by a head mounted display (HMD). To allow for free movement within the user environment, the tracking system is supposed to be user-wearable and entirely wireless. Consequently, a lightweight design is presented fea- turing small dimensions to fit into a conventional 13"laptop backpack, which satisfies the above stated demands for highly immersive extended range telepresence scenarios. Dedicated embedded hardware combined with off-the-shelf components is employed to form a robust, low-cost telepresence system that can be easily installed in any living room.

Ferdinand Packi, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Wireless Acoustic Tracking for Extended Range Telepresence Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN 2010), Zürich, Switzerland, September 2010. Author : Ferdinand Packi, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck Editor : Title : Wireless Acoustic Tracking for Extended Range Telepresence In : Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN 2010) Address : Zürich, Switzerland Date : September 2010 Abstract Telepresence systems enable a user to experience virtual or distant environments by providing sensory feedback. Appropriate devices include head mounted displays (HMD) for visual perception, headphones for auditory response, or even haptic displays for tactile sensation and force feedback. While most common designs use dedicated input devices like joysticks or a space mouse, the approach followed in the present work takes the user's position and viewing direction as an input, as he walks freely in his local surroundings. This is achieved by using acoustic tracking, where the user's pose (position and orientation) is estimated on the basis of ranges measured between a set of wall-fastened loudspeakers and a microphone array fixed on the user's HMD. To allow for natural user motion, a wearable, fully wireless telepresence system is introduced. The increase in comfort compared to wired solutions is obvious, as the user's awareness of distracting cables is taken away during walking. Also the lightweight design and small dimensions contribute to ergonomics, as the whole assembly fits well into a small backpack.

Patrick Dunau, Ferdinand Packi, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Efficient Multilateration Tracking with Concurrent Offset Estimation using Stochastic Filtering Techniques Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2010), Edinburgh, United Kingdom, July 2010. Author : Patrick Dunau, Ferdinand Packi, Frederik Beutler, Uwe D. Hanebeck Editor : Title : Efficient Multilateration Tracking with Concurrent Offset Estimation using Stochastic Filtering Techniques In : Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2010) Address : Edinburgh, United Kingdom Date : July 2010 Abstract Multilateration systems operate by deter- mining distances between a signal transmitter and a number of receivers. In aerial surveillance, radio sig- nals are emitted as Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) by the aircraft, representing the signal transmitter. A number of base stations (sensors) receive the signals at different times. Most common approaches use time dif- ference of arrival (TDOA) measurements, calculated by subtracting receiving times of one receiver from another. As TDOAs require intersecting hyperboloids, which is considered a hard task, this paper follows a different ap- proach, using raw receiving times. Thus, estimating the signal's emission time is required, captured as a com- mon offset within an augmented version of the system state. This way, the multilateration problem is reduced to intersecting cones. Estimation of the aircraft's posi- tion based on a nonlinear measurement model and an underlying linear system model is achieved using a lin- ear regression Kalman filter [1, 2]. A decomposed com- putation of the filter step is introduced, allowing a more efficient calculation.

Other

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