Ultrasound-aided pedestrian dead reckoning for indoor navigation

Abstract

Ad hoc solutions for tracking and providing navigation support to emergency response teams is an important and safetycritical challenge. We propose a navigation system based on a combination of foot-mounted inertial sensors and ultrasound beacons. We evaluate experimentally the performance of our dead reckoning system in different environments and for different trail topologies. The inherent drift observed in dead reckoning is addressed by deploying ultrasound beacons as landmarks. We study through simulations the use of the proposed approach in guiding a person along a defined path.Simulation results show that satisfactory guidance performance is achieved despite noisy ultrasound measurements, magnetic interference and uncertainty in ultrasound node locations. The models used for the simulations are based on experimental data and the authors' experience with actual sensors. The simulation results will be used to inform future development of a full real time system.

Activity-Based Estimation of Human Trajectories

“…Both research groups employ a particle filter to track possible trajectories and calculate the weights of the particles based on the WiFi signal strength. Fischer et al [10] discuss the possibility of using ultrasound sensors to reduce the error introduced by the MEMS sensors and present simulation results. Feliz et al [8] utilize a neural network to estimate the step size using a singe IMU and thus estimate the odometry.…”

Analysis of Short Term Path Prediction of Human Locomotion for Augmented and Virtual Reality Applications

“…using shoe-mounted inertial sensors [14] or ultrasound-aided systems [15]. These systems focus on providing a stable and accurate estimation of the user's position.…”

Towards human-centered support for indoor navigation

“…In the tradition of Context Awareness, indoor navigation support has been addressed either by focusing on the technical problem of obtaining precise position information indoors [9,12], separating it from the contextual nature of navigation; or by postponing the problem of perfect positioning, assuming that it will be solved at some point [1] and working on solutions based on its availability [13,17]. Both options are not really distinct, but rather two aspects of the same approach-one that equates the question of indoor navigation support with the question of precise position information.…”