Portable Real-time Indoor/Outdoor Navigation for Runners using Smart Devices

A.S. Ali, M. Omr, A. Al-Hamad, and J. Georgy

Abstract:	Running is an attractive activity among other physical activities. Most of the runners these days use smart devices to enjoy their activity practicing. A considerable number of runners use these devices to get information about their performance. Current smart devices, which includes smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and smart glasses contain low cost motion sensors and positioning systems. Generally, the embedded smart devices sensors are considered insufficient for reliable navigation purposes due to high noise ratio and large random drift rates especially in scenarios where a portable device orientation can freely change with respect to the user body. Hence, there is a need for a navigation solution capable of accurately utilizing measurements from a portable device being carried or used by a runner at different running speeds and gaits without any constraints to move indoors or outdoors. Current consumer portable devices experience a variety of motions during running with common device use cases. Device use cases include; in arm band, on wrist, in pocket, in backpack, on chest, on belt, or on head just to name a few. The orientation of the portable device changes significantly which makes the sensor-based navigation very difficult if referenced to the user. The proposed algorithm uses accelerometers and gyroscopes data to provide the device position and orientation. Also, it provides the heading misalignment between the user direction and the device heading. To get the travelled distance, the technique is able to provide a varying step length estimation which is one of the most important aspects of the running navigation solution. The proposed technique was tested on a large number of trajectories from a variety of people with different running speeds and gaits in multiple scenarios. The estimated misalignment, person heading, step length, and the positioning results were analyzed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed solution. The results clearly demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed technique and how it can enable a real-time, continuous, and reliable consumer localization with portable devices during running.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014) September 8 - 12, 2014 Tampa Convention Center Tampa, Florida
Pages:	569 - 578
Cite this article:	Ali, A.S., Omr, M., Al-Hamad, A., Georgy, J., "Portable Real-time Indoor/Outdoor Navigation for Runners using Smart Devices," Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014), Tampa, Florida, September 2014, pp. 569-578.
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