Inertial Navigation Systems for User-Centric Indoor Applications

Inertial navigation systems (INS) are aimed at supporting the navigation of objects and/or users making use of a computer equipped with motion (accelerometers) and rotation (gyroscopes) sensors to continuously calculate their motion and position. These are quite useful when the GPS signal is not available, such as in indoor scenarios. Thanks to the exponential growth in the number of smartphones equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes, more and more users in the consumer market can benefit of the INS installed in their handsets, which can leverage the deployment of location aware applications, from the navigation of public indoor buildings to buddy mapping social networking. This paper describes the architecture and main components of an INS deployed on common smartphones. Furthermore provides some interesting experimental results that highlight the limits of the technologies currently available in the consumer market. We then provide some crucial mechanisms that are needed to improve the accuracy of the system, such as the recalibration of the system with georeferenced points.