[robomaniacs]

Since winning the Maryland State tournament and the Boys & Girls Club Invitational, our Lego robotics team, the RoboManiacs, have decided to beef up their research presentation for the International Championship in April.

After some preliminary research, they have decided to completely scrap the presentation they have used so far and develop a totally new idea for use in Atlanta.

We need some technical help from some folks who might be able to provide some answers. I am going to try and describe their new idea as best as I can:

Their concept involves a positioning system that could be used in buildings by blind people to navigate. It would be similar to the GPS systems on cars, but would be adapted to work in public buildings, providing directional data to the handicapped users.

The user would carry a receiver, similar to a pager or cell phone in appearance. A building would have some type of wireless computer system that would locate the user within the building and transmit directional information to their desired location to their receiver. This information would be vocalized to the user through headphones connected to their receiver.

The end result would have the user define their destination within the building, then receive verbal instructions through their receiver and headphones on how to get there.

The questions they need help with at this time are:

1. What similar technology is already on the market? They have found numerous GPS location devices, but these devices generally are used to track the location of heavy assets, such as vehicles, trucks, cargo, etc. They have also looked into the AeroScout system. This again, only relays positioning data of people who have a transmitter.

2. What type of system could handle this type of application? Their research so far is pointing them towards a wi-fi LAN inside of the public building that could relay the directional information.

3. They are leaning towards speech recognition as a way for the user to define their destination. Is this feasible?

4. What type of computer system could handle tracking and relaying of directions for multiple users within a defined building?

Any help you might be able to provide would be appreciated.