Indoor Positioning System based on Gyroscope and Accelerometer
I am developing an Android App to track indoor position. My phone is an Google Nexus S using two sensors, the first being an Accelerometer and the second being a Gyroscope.
My idea is that from a starting reference point (a known GPS position), using the 2 sensors (accelerometer for motion and Gyro for directions) track the phone when moving. And display on a map when the user is going.
But the problem is that i have no idea how to combine both of these sensors to give me an actual position?
I have read some article on internet that talk about "kalman filter" and after some more research i found out that that filter is very very complex /too much for me) especially to code it in java for Android (cpu killer)
Does someone has some experience that he can share with me about indoor positioning system using Gyro and accelerometer?
Answer
Gyros and accelerometers are not enough.
You get position by integrating the linear acceleration twice but the error is horrible. It is useless in practice.
Here is an explanation by (Google Tech Talk) at 23:20. I highly recommend this video.
As for indoor positioning, I have found these useful:
- RSSI-Based Indoor Localization and Tracking Using Sigma-Point Kalman Smoothers
- Pedestrian Tracking with Shoe-Mounted Inertial Sensors
- Enhancing the Performance of Pedometers Using a Single Accelerometer
I have no idea how these methods would perform in real-life applications or how to turn them into a nice Android app.
A similar question is Calculating distance within a building.