IPNL — Intelligent Positioning and Navigation Laboratory
IPNL — Intelligent Positioning and Navigation Laboratory
Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Event Highlights
Research Themes
Receiver-Level GNSS Signal Processing and SDR
Software-defined receivers, vector tracking, and signal-quality analysis that turn distorted satellite signals into usable measurements with explicit uncertainty.
Urban GNSS Reliability and Signal Error Modeling
Modeling how GNSS measurements fail in dense cities — NLOS, multipath, diffraction, heavy-tailed errors — so downstream estimation and integrity systems know when to trust them.
Environment-Aware and 3D Map-Aided PNT
Using 3D city models, LiDAR maps, sky visibility, ray tracing, and digital twins to turn the urban environment from an obstacle into prior information for navigation.
Optimization-Based Estimation and Factor Graphs
Factor graph optimization as a unifying framework for GNSS, INS, carrier phase, Doppler, maps, perception, and integrity — reasoning over time across heterogeneous measurements.
Integrity, Fault Detection, and Safety-Quantifiable Localization
Navigation systems that estimate both state and trust — fault detection, non-Gaussian overbounding, protection-level computation, and integrity-constrained optimization for safety-critical autonomy.
Seamless Multi-Sensor PNT for Embodied Systems
Tightly coupled GNSS/INS/LiDAR/camera/UWB/Wi-Fi fusion for vehicles, robots, drones, smartphones, and wearables operating across open-sky, urban canyon, indoor, and GNSS-denied conditions.
Flagship Projects
Multi-Agent Collaborative GNSS for Intelligent Transportation Systems
completedVehicles share GNSS measurements through inter-vehicle ranging to improve urban positioning accuracy and integrity for ITS — the anchor RGC RIF program of the lab.
UrbanNav
activeOpen multisensory benchmark for urban navigation algorithms in Hong Kong's dense urban canyons.
Robust GNSS Navigation for Urban Air Traffic Management
activeAviation-grade GNSS + multi-sensor fusion navigation for low-altitude UAVs operating in dense urban environments — the urban air mobility (UAM / UTM) frontier.
GraphGNSSLib
activeOpen-source factor-graph platform for GNSS positioning, RTK, and GNSS/INS research.
Universal Vehicle Self-Diagnosis: Predictive Component Monitoring
activeData-driven, real-time predictive vehicle self-diagnosis using automotive-component data streams — extending the integrity arc from positioning into vehicle health monitoring.
3D Map-Aided GNSS (3DMA) for Smartphone and IoT
activeUsing 3D city models, skymask matching, and lightweight ray tracing to improve GNSS positioning on smartphones, wearables, and low-cost IoT receivers — the lab's signature long-running research thread, anchored by the multi-year Huawei collaborative partnership.
Environment-Aware GNSS for UAS and Autonomous Driving
activeUsing LiDAR, multi-camera perception, fish-eye sky imaging, and other rich onboard sensors to inform GNSS reliability and positioning on autonomous vehicles, UAVs, and robotic platforms — where the sensor budget and integrity bar are both higher than smartphone-grade positioning.
People
Principal Investigator
Postdoctoral Fellows
PhD Students
MSc Students
Administrative Staff
Research Assistants
Interns
Latest News
IPNL co-organizing 1st ICRA 2026 Workshop on Robot Meets GNSS and Ranging
Prof. Li-Ta Hsu is co-organizing the 1st Workshop on Robot Meets GNSS and Ranging for Seamless Autonomy at IEEE ICRA 2026 in Vienna on 5 June 2026, exploring synergies and challenges of radio-based ranging technologies in robotics.
Invited talk at CAS Wuhan PNT forum: 'Estimation in GNSS/INS integrated navigation: from EKF, FGO to SDP'
Prof. Li-Ta Hsu gave the opening technical talk at the 'Intelligent Fusion Positioning and Resilient PNT' Academic Forum at the CAS Innovation Academy of Precision Measurement Science and Technology in Wuhan on 24 April 2026. PolyU's IPNL fielded four speakers across the day: Prof. Hsu, Penggao Yan, Shiyu Bai, and Penghui Xu.
IPNL at ION Pacific PNT 2026 (Honolulu, April 2026)
PolyU IPNL took part in the 2026 ION Pacific PNT meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. Prof. Li-Ta Hsu served as a session chair and speaker, and IPNL members presented their work, continuing the lab's multi-year engagement with the Institute of Navigation's Pacific PNT conference series.
Stairio receives Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury at 51st Geneva Inventions Exhibition
Stairio — an autonomous staircase safety monitoring robot led by Prof. Li-Ta Hsu — received the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva.
IEEE ITSC 2025 workshop talk: 'When IV Meets Urban — IE Research' (November 2025)
Prof. Li-Ta Hsu gave an invited workshop talk at IEEE ITSC 2025 — When Intelligent Vehicles Meets Urban: Integrity-Estimation Research — building on the lab's integrity-constrained factor graph optimization research line.
Selected Publications
Open Resources
UrbanNav Dataset
Open multisensory dataset for benchmarking positioning and urban navigation algorithms
UrbanLoco Dataset
Full sensor-suite benchmark dataset for mapping and localization in highly urbanized scenes (San Francisco + Hong Kong)
IPIN-Examples
Companion code (Python + Jupyter) for the 2025 Artech House book Principles of Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation
Join IPNL
We are looking for PhD students, postdocs, and visiting researchers in GNSS, positioning, and navigation.
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