Indoor pedestrian navigation using foot-mounted IMU and portable ultrasound range sensors

Sensors (Basel). 2011;11(8):7606-24. doi: 10.3390/s110807606. Epub 2011 Aug 2.

Abstract

Many solutions have been proposed for indoor pedestrian navigation. Some rely on pre-installed sensor networks, which offer good accuracy but are limited to areas that have been prepared for that purpose, thus requiring an expensive and possibly time-consuming process. Such methods are therefore inappropriate for navigation in emergency situations since the power supply may be disturbed. Other types of solutions track the user without requiring a prepared environment. However, they may have low accuracy. Offline tracking has been proposed to increase accuracy, however this prevents users from knowing their position in real time. This paper describes a real time indoor navigation system that does not require prepared building environments and provides tracking accuracy superior to previously described tracking methods. The system uses a combination of four techniques: foot-mounted IMU (Inertial Motion Unit), ultrasonic ranging, particle filtering and model-based navigation. The very purpose of the project is to combine these four well-known techniques in a novel way to provide better indoor tracking results for pedestrians.

Keywords: indoor localization; inertial tracking; model-based navigation; ultrasound range sensors.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics
  • Computers
  • Equipment Design
  • Facility Design and Construction
  • Foot
  • Models, Statistical
  • Motion
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Safety*
  • Self-Help Devices
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Ultrasonics*
  • Walking