Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Approach Research Articles

Crowd-sourced AI based Indoor Localization using Support Vector Regression and Pedestrian Dead Reckoning

Aims and Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding in the market daily to assist humans in a variety of ways. However, as these models are expensive, there is still a gap in the availability of AI products to the common public with high component dependency. Objective and Methodology: To address the issue of additional component dependency on AI products, we propose a model that can use available Smartphone resources to perceive real-world huddles and assist ordinary people with their daily needs. The proposed AI model is to predict the user’s indoor position (Node) at the computer science and engineering block of CMR Institute of Technology (CMRIT) by using Smartphone sensors and wireless signals. We used SVR to predict the regular walk steps needed between two Nodes and Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) to predict the walk steps needed while the signal was lost in the indoor environment. Results: The Support vector regression (SVR) models make the locations to be available within the specified building boundaries for proper guidance. The PDR approach supports the user while signal loss between two Received Signal Strength Indicators (RSSI). The Pedestrian dead reckoning - Support Vector Regression (PD-SVR) results are showing 98% accuracy in NODE predictions with routing tables. The indoor positioning is 100% accurate with dynamic crowd-sourcing Node preparation. Conclusion: The results are compared with other indoor navigation models K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and DF-SVM are given 95% accurate NODE estimation with minimal need for network components.

QDR: A Quadrotor Dead Reckoning Framework

Quadrotors are used for variety of applications both outdoors and indoors. Among them are - deliveries, surveillance, transportation, mapping and more. To accomplish its tasks an accurate navigation solution is required. To that end, most quadrotors apply fusion between an inertial navigation system and other external sensors, such as global navigation satellite systems (outdoors) or vision (indoors/outdoors). Due to environmental or sensor constraints, in some portion of the trajectory, the navigation solution relies only on the inertial navigation system solution. Consequently, the navigation solution drifts in time due to errors and noise in the inertial sensors measurements. Motivated from the pedestrian dead reckoning approach, we propose the quadrotor dead-reckoning framework to mitigate the navigation solution drift in situations of pure inertial navigation. There, instead of a straight line trajectory, the quadrotor is flown with a periodic motion to enable peak to peak distance estimation. Simulation and experiments results show that the proposed approach greatly improves the accuracy of the navigation solution.

A Robust PDR/UWB Integrated Indoor Localization Approach for Pedestrians in Harsh Environments.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been widely used in industrial, construction, and other fields. In recent years, demands for pedestrian localization have been increasing rapidly. In most cases, these applications work in harsh indoor environments, which have posed many challenges in achieving high-precision localization. Ultra-wide band (UWB)-based localization systems and pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) algorithms are popular. However, both have their own advantages and disadvantages, and both exhibit a poor performance in harsh environments. UWB-based localization algorithms can be seriously interfered by non-line-of-sight (NLoS) propagation, and PDR algorithms display a cumulative error. For ensuring the accuracy of indoor localization in harsh environments, a hybrid localization approach is proposed in this paper. Firstly, UWB signals cannot penetrate obstacles in most cases, and traditional algorithms for improving the accuracy by NLoS identification and mitigation cannot work in this situation. Therefore, in this study, we focus on integrating a PDR and UWB-based localization algorithm according to the UWB communication status. Secondly, we propose an adaptive PDR algorithm. UWB technology can provide high-precision location results in line-of-sight (LoS) propagation. Based on these, we can train the parameters of the PDR algorithm for every pedestrian, to improve the accuracy. Finally, we implement this hybrid localization approach in a hardware platform and experiment with it in an environment similar to industry or construction. The experimental results show a better accuracy than traditional UWB and PDR approaches in harsh environments.

Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning Indoor Localization Based on OS-ELM

Smartphone-based pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) has become promising in indoor localization since it locates users with a smartphone only. However, existing PDR approaches are still facing the problem of accumulated localization errors due to low-cost noisy sensors and complicated human movements. This paper presents a novel PDR indoor localization algorithm combined with online sequential extreme learning machine (OS-ELM). By analyzing the process of PDR localization, this paper first formulates the process of PDR localization as an approximation function, and then, a sliding-window-based scheme is designed to preprocess the obtained inertial sensor data and thus to generate the feature dataset. At last, the OS-ELM-based PDR algorithm is proposed to address the localization problem of pedestrians. Due to the fact of universal approximation capability and extreme learning speed within OS-ELM, our algorithm can adapt to localization environment dynamically and reduce the localization errors to a low scale. In addition, by taking the movement habits of pedestrian into the process of extreme learning, our algorithm can predict the position of pedestrian regardless of holding postures. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, this paper implements OS-ELM-based PDR on a real android-based smartphone and compares it with the state-of-the-art approaches. Extensive experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in various different postures and the practicability in indoor localization.

Indoor localization and navigation using smartphone sensory data

In the cloud age, it is quite easy to collect sensory data from smartphones. With these sensory data, it is desired to provide various kinds of applications to serve the user. In this research, we aim at developing an indoor navigation system on smartphone using solely smartphone sensory data. There are many researches on indoor localization and navigation in the literature. Nevertheless, environmental sensors and/or wearable sensors are usually needed. This can be costly and inconvenient. In this paper, we propose a smartphone indoor localization system using only accelerometer and gyroscope data from the smartphone. The Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) approach is used to build this system. The PDR approach is simple and efficient though seems traditional. The major weakness of the PDR is that the estimation error would accumulate over time. Thus we propose to add so-called calibration marks which look like short arrows and are placed on both the floor plan and the ground. To use the system, the user first finds a calibration mark on the ground, stands on it and faces the right direction. He/she then moves the android icon (representing the user) on top of the calibration mark on the floor plan on the smartphone. When the user starts to move, the android icon also moves on the floor plan following the real-time estimation of step length and moving direction change for each step from accelerometer and gyroscope data. This is a prototype of an indoor navigation system that can become fully functional after an optimal path planning module is included. Experimental results of estimated walking trace tests show high accuracy. The system is promising and useful as long as a floor plan and calibration marks are built in advance.

Smartphone Inertial Sensor-Based Indoor Localization and Tracking With iBeacon Corrections

The Global Positioning System (GPS) can be readily used for outdoor localization, but GPS signals are degraded in indoor environments. How to develop a robust and accurate indoor localization system is an emergent task. In this paper, we propose a smartphone inertial sensor-based indoor localization and tracking system with occasional iBeacon corrections. Some important issues in a smartphone-based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) approach, i.e., step detection, walking direction estimation, and initial point estimation, are studied. One problem of the PDR approach is the drift with walking distance. We apply a recent technology, iBeacon, to occasionally calibrate the drift of the PDR approach. By analyzing iBeacon measurements, we define an efficient calibration range where an extended Kalman filter is utilized. The proposed localization and tracking system can be implemented in resource-limited smartphones. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, real experiments under two different environments have been conducted. The experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach. We also tested the localization accuracy with respect to the number of iBeacons.

Toward the use of smartphones for mobile mapping

This paper considers the use of a low cost mobile device in order to develop a mobile mapping system (MMS), which exploits only sensors embedded in the device. The goal is to make this MMS usable and reliable even in difficult environments (e.g. emergency conditions, when also WiFi connection might not work). For this aim, a navigation system able to deal with the unavailability of the GNSS (e.g. indoors) is proposed first. Positioning is achieved by a pedestrian dead reckoning approach, i.e. a specific particle filter has been designed to enable good position estimations by a small number of particles (e.g. 100). This specific characteristic enables its real time use on the standard mobile devices. Then, 3D reconstruction of the scene can be achieved by processing multiple images acquired with the standard camera embedded in the device. As most of the vision-based 3D reconstruction systems are recently proposed in the literature, this work considers the use of structure from motion to estimate the geometrical structure of the scene. The detail level of the reconstructed scene is clearly related to the number of images processed by the reconstruction system. However, the execution of a 3D reconstruction algorithm on a mobile device imposes several restrictions due to the limited amount of available energy and computing power. This consideration motivates the search for new methods to obtain similar results with less computational cost. This paper proposes a novel method for feature matching, which allows increasing the number of correctly matched features between two images according to our simulations and can make the matching process more robust.

A Bluetooth/PDR Integration Algorithm for an Indoor Positioning System.

This paper proposes two schemes for indoor positioning by fusing Bluetooth beacons and a pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) technique to provide meter-level positioning without additional infrastructure. As to the PDR approach, a more effective multi-threshold step detection algorithm is used to improve the positioning accuracy. According to pedestrians’ different walking patterns such as walking or running, this paper makes a comparative analysis of multiple step length calculation models to determine a linear computation model and the relevant parameters. In consideration of the deviation between the real heading and the value of the orientation sensor, a heading estimation method with real-time compensation is proposed, which is based on a Kalman filter with map geometry information. The corrected heading can inhibit the positioning error accumulation and improve the positioning accuracy of PDR. Moreover, this paper has implemented two positioning approaches integrated with Bluetooth and PDR. One is the PDR-based positioning method based on map matching and position correction through Bluetooth. There will not be too much calculation work or too high maintenance costs using this method. The other method is a fusion calculation method based on the pedestrians’ moving status (direct movement or making a turn) to determine adaptively the noise parameters in an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) system. This method has worked very well in the elimination of various phenomena, including the “go and back” phenomenon caused by the instability of the Bluetooth-based positioning system and the “cross-wall” phenomenon due to the accumulative errors caused by the PDR algorithm. Experiments performed on the fourth floor of the School of Environmental Science and Spatial Informatics (SESSI) building in the China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT) campus showed that the proposed scheme can reliably achieve a 2-meter precision.

Improving Inertial Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning by Detecting Unmodified Switched-on Lamps in Buildings

This paper explores how inertial Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning (PDR) location systems can be improved with the use of a light sensor to measure the illumination gradients created when a person walks under ceiling-mounted unmodified indoor lights. The process of updating the inertial PDR estimates with the information provided by light detections is a new concept that we have named Light-matching (LM). The displacement and orientation change of a person obtained by inertial PDR is used by the LM method to accurately propagate the location hypothesis, and vice versa; the LM approach benefits the PDR approach by obtaining an absolute localization and reducing the PDR-alone drift. Even from an initially unknown location and orientation, whenever the person passes below a switched-on light spot, the location likelihood is iteratively updated until it potentially converges to a unimodal probability density function. The time to converge to a unimodal position hypothesis depends on the number of lights detected and the asymmetries/irregularities of the spatial distribution of lights. The proposed LM method does not require any intensity illumination calibration, just the pre-storage of the position and size of all lights in a building, irrespective of their current on/off state. This paper presents a detailed description of the light-matching concept, the implementation details of the LM-assisted PDR fusion scheme using a particle filter, and several simulated and experimental tests, using a light sensor-equipped Galaxy S3 smartphone and an external foot-mounted inertial sensor. The evaluation includes the LM-assisted PDR approach as well as the fusion with other signals of opportunity (WiFi, RFID, Magnetometers or Map-matching) in order to compare their contribution in obtaining high accuracy indoor localization. The integrated solution achieves a localization error lower than 1 m in most of the cases.