On-body multi-input indoor localization for dynamic emergency scenarios: fusion of magnetic tracking and optical character recognition with mixed-reality display

Abstract

Indoor navigation in emergency scenarios poses a challenge to evacuation and emergency support, especially for injured or physically encumbered individuals. Navigation systems must be lightweight, easy to use, and provide robust localization and accurate navigation instructions in adverse conditions. To address this challenge, we combine magnetic location tracking with an optical character recognition (OCR) and eye gaze based method to recognize door plates and position related text to provide more robust localization. In contrast to typical wireless or sensor based tracking, our fused system can be used in low-lighting, smoke, and areas without power or wireless connectivity. Eye gaze tracking is also used to improve time to localization and accuracy of the OCR algorithm. Once localized, navigation instructions are transmitted directly into the user's immediate field of view via head mounted display (HMD). Additionally, setting up the system is simple and can be done with minimal calibration, requiring only a walk-through of the environment and numerical annotation of a 2D area map. We conduct an evaluation for the magnetic and OCR systems individually to evaluate feasibility for use in the fused framework.

Marker-Based Localization of the Microsoft Hololens in Building Models

“…the usage of door-plates as markers would be an option for applications in the field of facility management, with pre-known door-plate geometry providing means for pose estimation and room numbers on the door-plates providing for unambiguousness of location. Orlosky et al (2014) for example use optical detection of door-plates in combination with magnetic tracking for localization in indoor emergency scenarios.…”

Indoor Tracking: Theory, Methods, and Technologies

“…There are many recent papers on fusion methods for indoor tracking. They address different applications (e.g., tracking of moving human targets [81] or navigation in emergency scenarios [82]) and present fusion of different types of measurements (e.g., radio-based ranging and speed-based sensing measurements [83], ToF wireless ranging and micro-electromechanical (MEMS) inertial sensor measurements [84], inertial sensor and Wi-Fi measurements [85], or various signals of opportunity [86]).…”

Universally Designed Beacon-Assisted Indoor Navigation for Emergency Evacuations

“…Indoor navigation has been studied by researchers using various technologies such as smartphones, wireless beacon, sensor networks, magnetometer, magnetic tracking, optical character recognition 3D graphics, surveillance camera [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. These works are presented as theoretical works such as development of algorithms and simulations, or as practical-oriented works manifested as technology prototypes.…”

“…Orlosky et al [9] conduct an experiment with on-body multi-input indoor localization by applying fusion of magnetic tracking and optical character recognition (OCR). In addition, the mixed-reality display and the eye gaze-based method are used to recognize door plates and position related text to provide more robust localization.…”