Navigation systems for pedestrians - a basis for various value-added services

Klaus Legat and Wolfgang Lechner

Abstract:	Navigation systems for pedestrians are still rather rare products mostly used by specialists or by the military. There is, however, a great possibility to integrate such devices into intelligent value-added services generating huge benefits to their users. There is a chance to enter the mass market similar to the impact car navigation systems had. One may think of mobile traveler and passenger information systems, or even of safety-of-life applications, e.g., of firemen having to find their way through smoky corridors in burning buildings, etc. The four companies Filser Electronic (Germany), LX Navigation (Slovenia), TeleConsult (Austria) and Telematica (Germany) have produced such a navigation device for pedestrians. This tool basically performs integrated navigation applying input information from various different sensors. These include a GPS receiver, a GPS augmentation receiver, a barometric altimeter, a digital magnetic compass, and a nearly vertically oriented accelerometer for step detection and velocity determination. All different input data are introduced into a Kalman filter being responsible for real-time determination of the pedestrian's trajectory. If GPS or DGPS are available, the navigation is performed in an integrated mode combining the data from all different sensors and weighting the measurements according to the current conditions. In case of bad satellite visibility, the navigation algorithm performs dead reckoning by means of the magnetic azimuth and the horizontal velocity obtained by analyzing the data of the vertical accelerometer. The height is still available through the altimeter. Thus, the pedestrian can also determine her/ his three dimensional position within buildings, urban canyons and dense forests offering an ideal fundament for various value-added services. The paper will present the basic layout of the system and will show results from simulation studies as well as from performance demonstrations in a real world environment.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000) September 19 - 22, 2000 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	1713 - 1720
Cite this article:	Legat, Klaus, Lechner, Wolfgang, "Navigation systems for pedestrians - a basis for various value-added services," Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2000, pp. 1713-1720.
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