Evaluation of a coupled laser inertial navigation system for pedestrian tracking

This paper evaluates a previously presented method for indoor pedestrian tracking using inertial sensing and a laser scanner (Light Detection and Ranging LIDAR). The zero velocity updating technique [2], which is used to enhance the performances of an inertial sensing sensor mounted on the foot, cannot observe heading, resulting in a horizontal position drift. A LIDAR mounted on the head is used as a complementary technique to correct heading. The well known Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm [5] is adapted to treat captured laser scans at given instances that we call middle of foot stance phases. The detection process of those instances is presented, which is followed by a LIDAR-inertial coupling: the corrected position delivered by the ICP algorithm is forwarded as a position fix to the extended Kalman filter, treating the inertial sensor data on the foot, and thus compensates its drift. After presenting the tracking algorithm and the system description, a visual and numerical evaluation is carried out to assess the presented tracking system with regard to stability and accuracy.