A Novel Position and Orientation System for Pedestrian Indoor Mobile Mapping System

Abstract

A reliable and accurate position and orientation system (POS) is essential for indoor mobile mapping system (MMS). We propose a novel pedestrian POS solution for indoor MMS using backpack INS, foot mounted pedestrian dead reckoning (Foot-PDR) and sparse control points with known coordinates. The Foot-PDR can provide continuous high precision positioning with the corrections of the control points to maintain its absolute accuracy. Such precise positioning is integrated with the backpack INS to estimate the accurate position and orientation, similar to the GNSS/INS integration for the outdoor environment. The lever-arm variation issue between the backpack INS and the Foot-PDR is solved by catching a specific phase of the gait cycle that has consistent relative pose between the back and the heel of pedestrians. The feasibility of the proposed POS was verified by an outdoor large-scale open-sky area and an indoor office environment tests. The outdoor experimental results demonstrate that the estimated horizontal position and yaw angle has an accuracy of 0.07 m and 0.6°, respectively (when the control points are as sparse as 50 meters). The indoor experimental results demonstrate that the position accuracy is 0.07 m, 0.08 m, and 0.04 m, along the north, east, and height directions. Furthermore, the proposed POS does not require expensive infrastructure support and is immune to indoor environment changes.