Enhancing indoor inertial pedestrian navigation using a shoe-worn marker.

Mitja Placer,Stanislav Kovačič

doi:10.3390/s130809836

Mitja Placer, Stanislav Kovačič

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s130809836

Copy DOI

Abstract

We propose a novel hybrid inertial sensors-based indoor pedestrian dead reckoning system, aided by computer vision-derived position measurements. In contrast to prior vision-based or vision-aided solutions, where environmental markers were used—either deployed in known positions or extracted directly from it—we use a shoe-fixed marker, which serves as positional reference to an opposite shoe-mounted camera during foot swing, making our system self-contained. Position measurements can be therefore more reliably fed to a complementary unscented Kalman filter, enhancing the accuracy of the estimated travelled path for 78%, compared to using solely zero velocities as pseudo-measurements.

Highlights

Indoor pedestrian positioning, a prominent example of where Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) solutions come up short in terms of performance [1], is a fast growing segment with great potential
The following hardware is used in our proof-of-concept Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) system:
All data preprocessing and computations are performed offline with main algorithms running in MATLAB Simulink environment

Summary

Introduction

A prominent example of where Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) solutions come up short in terms of performance [1], is a fast growing segment with great potential. This kind of positioning could prove itself to be as useful for the general public (e.g., context-aware applications in airports, shopping malls, libraries, museums, subways, etc.) as for professional users (e.g., helping firefighters and first responders to navigate in low visibility conditions). Beauregard [2] has listed a number of demanding, for many technologies prohibitive technical requirements in these worst case scenarios, and pointed out the time-consuming deployment and calibration of UWB beacon-based positioning systems. Rantakokko et al [4] observed that a robust and accurate first responder positioning system for urban operations requires the use of a multi-sensor approach

Results

Discussion

Conclusion