For our experiments we are developing a R package to analyse GPS data. The objective is to develop a package which simplifies the actions required by behavioral scientists to conduct experiments with GPS trackers.

Features

‘psyosphere’ can calculate the variables like:

  • Distance
  • Duration
  • Speed
  • Bearing
  • Distances: to moving objects, team members, points
  • Deviation from shortest route (start, finish)
  • Entering a area (defined by polygons)

The data can also be split by areas. The splits can be created based on:

  • A polygon of coordinates and all points within the polygon are selected
  • A polygon of coordinates and all points outside the polygon are selected
  • Points between two polygons of coordinates
  • A specific time or time interval

Further features are:

  • Plotting tracks, lines and polygons on google maps
  • Create descriptive summaries: min, max, weighted average, …
  • Detect and remove gaps

Download

You can download ‘psyosphere’ from the CRAN with the following R command:

install.packages(“psyosphere”)

Developer version

You can download the developer version of ‘psyosphere’ with the following R command:

devtools::install_bitbucket(“bziepert/psyosphere”)

However, you need to install “devtools” first. An easy solution is the code below. You can just put it at the binning of your script. The code checks if devtools and psyosphere are already installed and if not, installs them. The “library” commands checks if install was successful and adds the packages to the workspace. If the packages are already installed they will only be added to the workspace.

if (!require(devtools)) { install.packages(“devtools”) }

library(devtools)

if (!require(psyosphere)) { devtools::install_bitbucket(“bziepert/psyosphere”) }

library(psyosphere)

The “install” commands will produce some warnings which usually can be ignored. If the library commands give a warning you should check it.

Questions & feedback

Feel free to contact us for questions and feedback about psyosphere.

For Programmers

We stored the source code in a public GIT on bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/bziepert/psyosphere. Feel free to review the code and to submit improvements.