Smartphone-based pedestrian tracking in indoor corridor environments

As the use of smartphones spreads rapidly, user localization becomes an important issue for providing diverse location-based services (LBS). While tracking users in outdoor environments is easily done with GPS, the solution for indoor tracking is not trivial. One common technique for indoor user tracking is to employ inertial sensors, but such a system needs to be capable of handling noisy sensors that would normally lead to cumulative locating errors. To reduce such error, additional infrastructure has often been deployed to adjust for these cumulative location errors. As well, previous work has used highly accurate sensors or sensors that are strapped to the body. This paper presents a stand-alone pedestrian tracking system, using only a magnetometer and an accelerometer in a smartphone in indoor corridor environments that are normally laid out in a perpendicular design. Our system provides reasonably accurate pedestrian locations without additional infrastructure or sensors. The experiment results show that the location error is less than approximately 7 m, which is considered adequate for indoor LBS applications.     

基于智能手机无线信号和图像距离感知融合的室内定位算法

针对于目前面向个人使用的手机室内定位精度低、效果差,且成本较高难以拓展的问题,提出了一种利用普通智能手机作为硬件设备,融合Wi-Fi无线信号和图像数据,通过双层过滤的方式对用户进行高精度室内定位的算法。算法分为线下阶段和线上阶段。在线下阶段,对目标场地建立坐标系,在坐标系多个目标位置进行Wi-Fi采样并建立指纹库,同时对环境进行拍照取样并抽取图像特征。在线上阶段,通过实时获取的Wi-Fi信息进行第一层过滤,以确定当前用户可能的位置区间;然后,结合提出的一种距离补偿算法对用户手机当前捕获的图像进行特征提取,在第一层过滤的基础上,确定用户的精准位置。在实际场地进行的实验表明,相比传统Wi-Fi及二维图像定位方法,该算法能够在探测接入点（AP）数量较少及室内场景相似的情况下提高室内定位精度,可以应用于一般室内定位应用或结合基于位置的服务（LBS）应用。     

Context-aware obstacle detection for navigation by visually impaired

This paper presents a context-aware smartphone-based based visual obstacle detection approach to aid visually impaired people in navigating indoor environments. The approach is based on processing two consecutive frames (images), computing optical flow, and tracking certain points to detect obstacles. The frame rate of the video stream is determined using a context-aware data fusion technique for the sensors on smartphones. Through an efficient and novel algorithm, a point dataset on each consecutive frames is designed and evaluated to check whether the points belong to an obstacle. In addition to determining the points based on the texture in each frame, our algorithm also considers the heading of user movement to find critical areas on the image plane. We validated the algorithm through experiments by comparing it against two comparable algorithms. The experiments were conducted in different indoor settings and the results based on precision, recall, accuracy, and f-measure were compared and analyzed. The results show that, in comparison to the other two widely used algorithms for this process, our algorithm is more precise. We also considered time-to-contact parameter for clustering the points and presented the improvement of the performance of clustering by using this parameter.     

Recognizing multi-modal sensor signals using evolutionary learning of dynamic Bayesian networks

Multi-modal context-aware systems can provide user-adaptive services, but it requires complicated recognition models with larger resources. The limitations to build optimal models and infer the context efficiently make it difficult to develop practical context-aware systems. We developed a multi-modal context-aware system with various wearable sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, physiological sensors, and data gloves. The system used probabilistic models to handle the uncertain and noisy time-series sensor data. In order to construct the efficient probabilistic models, this paper uses an evolutionary algorithm to model structure and EM algorithm to determine parameters. The trained models are selectively inferred based on a semantic network which describes the semantic relations of the contexts and sensors. Experiments with the real data collected show the usefulness of the proposed method.     

Multi-target indoor localization and tracking on video monitoring system in a wireless sensor network

The development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has greatly encouraged the use of sensors for multi-target tracking. The high efficiency detection and location monitoring are critical requirements for multi-target tracking in a WSN. In this paper, we present an indoor tracking model using IEEE 802.15.4 compliant radio frequency and video monitoring system to monitor targets in a special way. Our motivation is to manipulate the erratic or unstable received signal strength indicator (RSSI) signals to deliver the stable and precise position information in the indoor environment. We propose a localization algorithm based on statistical uncorrelated vectors and develop a smoothing algorithm to minimize the noise in RSSI values. We also present a solution combining the WSN with the Ethernet technology to decrease the RSSI interference by buildings. The developed system can realize the functions of multi-target detection and tracking, and specific target inquiries, alarms and monitoring. The system architecture, hardware and software organization, as well as the solutions for multiple targets tracking, RSSI interference and localization accuracy have been introduced in details.     

Intelligent video surveillance system: 3-tier context-aware surveillance system with metadata

This paper presents an intelligent video surveillance system with the metadata rule for the exchange of analyzed information. We define the metadata rule for the exchange of analyzed information between intelligent video surveillance systems that automatically analyzes video data acquired from cameras. The metadata rule is to effectively index very large video surveillance databases and to unify searches and management between distributed or heterogeneous surveillance systems more efficiently. The system consists of low-level context-aware, high-level context-aware and intelligent services to generate metadata for the surveillance systems. Various contexts are acquired from physical sensors in monitoring areas for the low-level context-aware system. The situation is recognized in the high-level context-aware system by analyzing the context data collected in the low-level system. The system provides intelligent services to track moving objects in Fields Of View (FOVs) and to recognize human activities. Furthermore, the system supports real-time moving objects tracking with Panning, Tilting and Zooming (PTZ) cameras in overlapping and non-overlapping FOVs.     

融合多模传感器的室内实时高精度轨迹生成

提出了一种融合多模传感器的室内实时高精度轨迹生成方法,亦即将室内Wi-Fi定位与传感器定位结合起来,生成用户在室内移动的实时轨迹。首先由Wi-Fi定位出用户的初始位置,然后结合Wi-Fi定位的结果以及多个传感器的数据,得到用户的运动速度以及方向,通过航迹推算算法得到用户下一时刻的位置,最后对得出的位置坐标进行卡尔曼滤波处理,得到用户的位置坐标,最终生成用户移动的实时轨迹。实验结果表明,该方法可以得到比Wi-Fi定位更为平滑稠密的移动轨迹,且精确度 比其他同类方法更高。     

Automated construction of Wi-Fi-based indoor logical location predictor using crowd-sourced photos with Wi-Fi signals

Owing to the recent proliferation of smartphones and the SNS, a large number of images taken by smartphones at various places have been uploaded to SNSs. In addition, smartphones are equipped with various sensors such as Wi-Fi modules that enable us to generate an image associated with the sensory information that represents the context in which the image was captured. This study demonstrates the benefits of images associated with Wi-Fi signals in the automated construction of a Wi-Fi-based indoor logical location classifier that predicts a semantic location label of a user’s position for shopping complexes. In this study, a logical location class refers to the store class label in a shopping complex, such as Starbucks and H&M. Given a collection of images associated with Wi-Fi signals taken at a shopping complex and the complex’s floor plan, the proposed method first estimates the store label at which an image was taken by analyzing the image and crawled online images of branch stores. Then, the 2D coordinates of the images taken at branch stores on the floor coordinate system can be estimated using the floor plan. Subsequently, by using the Wi-Fi signals of the branch store images and their estimated 2D coordinates, we construct a transformation function that maps Wi-Fi signals onto the 2D coordinates, and we adopt this function to predict an indoor location class of an observed Wi-Fi scan from a smartphone possessed by an end user. The proposed transformation function comprises an ensemble of sub-functions designed based on CVAEs. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for three actual shopping complexes.     

基于动态时间规整距离指纹匹配的Wi-Fi网络室内定位算法

Wi-Fi网络中常规的基于指纹匹配室内定位算法面临信号时变现象或人为干扰的影响,导致定位精度不高。为此,提出基于动态时间规整（DTW）距离相似性指纹匹配的Wi-Fi网络室内定位算法。首先,该算法将定位区域的Wi-Fi信号特征按照采样的先后顺序转化为时间序列类型指纹,通过计算Wi-Fi信号指纹动态时间规整距离的大小来获取定位点与样本点的相似性;然后,根据采样区域结构特征,将Wi-Fi信号指纹采集问题划分为三类基本的动态路径采样方式;最后,结合多种动态路径采样方式增加指纹特征信息的准确性和完整性,从而提高指纹匹配的准确性和定位精度。大量实验结果表明,较瞬时指纹匹配定位算法,所提算法误差范围在3m以内定位的累积错误率：路径区域匀速运动提高了10%,变速运动提高了13%;开放区域交叉曲线运动提高了9%,S型曲线运动提高了3%。所提算法在实际室内定位应用中能有效提高指纹匹配的准确性和定位精度。     

Smartphone-based Wi-Fi tracking system exploiting the RSS peak to overcome the RSS variance problem

The Wi-Fi fingerprinting (WF) technique normally suffers from the Received Signal Strength (RSS) variance problem caused by environmental changes that are inherent in both the training and localization phases. Several calibration algorithms have been proposed but they only focus on the hardware variance problem. Moreover, smartphones were not evaluated and these are now widely used in WF systems. In this paper, we analyzed various aspects of the RSS variance problem when using smartphones for WF: device type, device placement, user direction, and environmental changes over time. To overcome the RSS variance problem, we also propose a smartphone-based, indoor pedestrian-tracking system. The scheme uses the location where the maximum RSS is observed, which is preserved even though RSS varies significantly. We experimentally validate that the proposed system is tolerant to the RSS variance problem.     

利用众包更新Wi-Fi室内定位指纹库的方法研究

Wi-Fi定位是目前较为主流的室内定位方法,而位置指纹库的建立和维护对Wi-Fi定位至关重要。Wi-Fi信号时变性强要求指纹库及时更新。针对由专业人员更新指纹库的人力耗费问题,提出利用众包更新指纹库的方法,允许用户对定位结果进行评价和修正,使得用户在享受定位结果的同时参与到指纹库的维护更新中,特别针对用户的错误修正提出了基于聚类的错误检测方法,能有效避免指纹库被错误指纹污染。开发了室内定位系统,通过在真实室内环境的实验验证了本文提出的方法可以长时间保持较高的定位性能。     

WTrack: HMM-based walk pattern recognition and indoor pedestrian tracking using phone inertial sensors

Indoor tracking systems have become very popular, wherein pedestrian movement is analyzed in a variety of commercial and secure spaces. The inertial sensor-based method makes great contributions to continuous and seamless indoor pedestrian tracking. However, such a system is vulnerable to the cumulative locating errors when moving distance increases. Inaccurate heading values caused by the interference of body swing of natural walking and the geomagnetic disturbances are the main sources of the accumulative errors. To reduce such errors, additional infrastructure or highly accurate sensors have been used by previous works that considerably raise the complexity of the architecture. This paper presents an indoor pedestrian tracking system called WTrack, using only geomagnetic sensors and acceleration sensors that are commonly carried by smartphones. A fine-grained walk pattern of indoor pedestrians is modeled through Hidden Markov Model. With this model, WTrack can track indoor pedestrians by continuously recognizing the pre-defined pedestrians’ walk pattern. More importantly, WTrack is able to resist both the interference of body swing of natural walking and the geomagnetic disturbances of nearby objects. Our experimental results reveal that the location error is <2 m, which is considered adequate for indoor location-based-service applications. The adaptive sample rate adjustment mode further reduces the energy consumption by 52 % in comparison, as opposed to the constant sampling mode.     

基于无线信道状态相位信息优化的定位算法

随着位置服务需求的增长,基于Wi-Fi接收信号的室内定位技术一直是研究热点之一.通过检测环境变化对Wi-Fi无线信道状态信息CSI的影响,从而实现对室内人员的定位具有通用性强、部署成本低等优点.针对大多系统仅使用CSI中幅度信息所带来准确性和稳定性不足的问题,设计并实现了一种基于CSI相位信息优化的定位算法,该方法通过采集幅度和相位参数相结合作为位置指纹特征,并对特征数据进行预先平滑去噪后进行指纹库的构建,然后通过机器学习方法进行人员位置的分类识别.由于相位和幅度信息可以相互补充,弥补了某些易混淆位置的分类错误,从而解决了采用单一特征的定位准确性和稳定性问题.实验进行了两种不同多径场景下的实验,比较了不同指纹特征选取、数据预处理方法以及三种机器学习算法对定位准确度的影响,其结果表明采用本文所提出算法总体上可以在仅使用CSI幅度特征的基础上提高13%.     

Preprocessing techniques for context recognition from accelerometer data

The ubiquity of communication devices such as smartphones has led to the emergence of context-aware services that are able to respond to specific user activities or contexts. These services allow communication providers to develop new, added-value services for a wide range of applications such as social networking, elderly care and near-emergency early warning systems. At the core of these services is the ability to detect specific physical settings or the context a user is in, using either internal or external sensors. For example, using built-in accelerometers, it is possible to determine whether a user is walking or running at a specific time of day. By correlating this knowledge with GPS data, it is possible to provide specific information services to users with similar daily routines. This article presents a survey of the techniques for extracting this activity information from raw accelerometer data. The techniques that can be implemented in mobile devices range from classical signal processing techniques such as FFT to contemporary string-based methods. We present experimental results to compare and evaluate the accuracy of the various techniques using real data sets collected from daily activities.     

SRS: Spatial-tagged radio-mapping system combining LiDAR and mobile-phone data for indoor location-based services

One of the most challenging issues in radio received signal strength (RSS)-based localization systems is the generation and distribution of a radio map with a coordinate system linked with spatial information in a large indoor space. This study proposes a novel spatial-tagged radio-mapping system (SRS) that effectively combines the heterogeneous properties of LiDAR and mobile phones to simultaneously perform both spatial and radio mappings. The SRS consists of synchronization, localization, and map building processes, and enables real-time spatial and radio mapping. In the synchronization process, the distance range, motion data, and radio signals obtained through the LiDAR and mobile phone are collected in nodal units according to the sensing time. In the localization process, a feature variance filter is used to control the number of features generated from LiDAR and estimate the positions at which the nodes are generated in real time according to the motion data and radio signals. In map building, the estimated positions of the nodes are used to extract spatial and radio maps by using a unified location coordinate system. To ensure mobility, the SRS is manufactured in the form of a backpack supporting LiDAR and a mobile phone; the usefulness of the system is experimentally verified. The experiments are performed in a large indoor shopping mall with a complex structure. The experimental results demonstrated that a common coordinate system could be used to build spatial and radio maps with high accuracy and efficiency in real time. In addition, the field applicability of the SRS to location-based services is experimentally verified by applying the constructed radio map to well-known fingerprinting algorithms using the heterogeneous mobile phones.     

PLaTHEA: a marker‐less people localization and tracking system for home automation

Current smart spaces require more and more sophisticated sensors able to acquire the state of the environment in order to provide advanced and customized services. Among the most important environmental variables, locations of users and their identities represent a primary concern for smart home applications. Despite some years of investigation in indoor positioning, the availability of systems designed as components pluggable into complex home automation platforms is limited. We present People Localization and Tracking for HomE Automation (PLaTHEA), a vision‐based indoor localization system specifically tailored for Ambient Assisted Living applications. PLaTHEA features a novel technique to acquire a stereo video stream from a couple of independent (and not synchronized) network‐attached cameras, thus easing its physical deployment. The input stream is processed by integrating well‐known techniques with a novel tracking approach targeted to indoor spaces. The system has a modular architecture that offers clear interfaces exposed as Web services, and it can run on off‐the‐shelf and cheap hardware (both in terms of sensing devices and computing units). We evaluated PLaTHEA in real usage conditions and reported the measured performance in terms of precision and accuracy. Low light, crowded and large monitored environments might slightly decrease the performance of the system; nevertheless, the results here presented show that it is perfectly suitable to be employed in the typical domestic day‐to‐day life settings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Communicating Is Crowdsourcing: Wi-Fi Indoor Localization with CSI-Based Speed Estimation

Numerous indoor localization techniques have been proposed recently to meet the intensive demand for location-based service (LBS). Among them, the most popular solutions are the Wi-Fi fingerprint-based approaches. The core challenge is to lower the cost of fingerprint site-survey. One of the trends is to collect the piecewise data from clients and establish the radio map in crowdsourcing manner. However the low participation rate blocks the practical use. In this work, we propose a passive crowdsourcing channel state information (CSI) based indoor localization scheme, C²IL. Despite a crowdsourcing based approach, our scheme is totally transparent to the client and the only requirement is to connect to our 802.11n access points (APs). C²IL is built upon an innovative method to accurately estimate the moving speed solely based on 802.11n CSI. Knowing the walking speed of a client and its surrounding APs, a graph matching algorithm is employed to extract the received signal strength (RSS) fingerprints and establish the fingerprint map. For localization phase, we design a trajectory clustering based localization algorithm to provide precise real-time indoor localization and tracking. We develop and deploy a practical working system of C²IL in a large office environment. Extensive evaluations indicate that the error of speed estimation is within 3%, and the localization error is within 2 m at 80% time in a very complex indoor environment.     

IWFUCIA: An integrated model for Wi-Fi fingerprints radio map updating and localization on changed impact analysis

In Wi-Fi fingerprinting indoor localization, automating radio map database maintenance is one of the crucial issues, as it is a labour-intensive and long-term task for collecting and filtering samples to keep an up-to-date and accurate database. In particular, those access points (APs) newly installed in the environment should update radio maps and be included in the database to improve localization performance. This study presents an IWFUCIA system that automates indoor radio map database maintenance (RMapDM) using crowdsourced samples without accurate location annotation. The IWFUCIA incorporates the newly installed APs detection and identification, the significant APs feature selection, fingerprint integration updating, and online localization algorithms. After collecting new crowdsourced samples, we apply Willmott’s index of agreement (WIA) based on the Supported Vector Machine (SVM) regression to detect and identify a newly installed AP and the original existing ones. After getting the new APs, we propose a correlated coefficient and t-test score algorithm to select only those significant AP-based feature samples. We also proposed a fingerprint integration model to fuse original existing and new APs to update the database. Extensive experiments have been conducted in our teaching building to validate and evaluate the effectiveness of IWFUCIA. The results show that our IWFUCIA is robust for long-term maintenance and updating the outdated radio map database server. The average localization accuracy achieves 0.466 m, which significantly outperforms the localization positioning approaches with the original radio map by 84.96%, outdated radio maps by the changed APs powers removed, increased and decreased by 26.32%, 55.36%, and 73.14%, respectively.     

Performance analysis of visualmarkers for indoor navigation systems

The massive diffusion of smartphones, the growing interest in wearable devices and the Internet of Things, and the exponential rise of location based services (LBSs) have made the problem of localization and navigation inside buildings one of the most important technological challenges of recent years. Indoor positioning systems have a huge market in the retail sector and contextual advertising; in addition, they can be fundamental to increasing the quality of life for citizens if deployed inside public buildings such as hospitals, airports, and museums. Sometimes, in emergency situations, they can make the difference between life and death. Various approaches have been proposed in the literature. Recently, thanks to the high performance of smartphones’ cameras, marker-less and marker-based computer vision approaches have been investigated. In a previous paper, we proposed a technique for indoor localization and navigation using both Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and a 2D visual marker system deployed into the floor. In this paper, we presented a qualitative performance evaluation of three 2D visual markers, Vuforia, ArUco marker, and AprilTag, which are suitable for real-time applications. Our analysis focused on specific case study of visual markers placed onto the tiles, to improve the efficiency of our indoor localization and navigation approach by choosing the best visual marker system.     

基于Wi-Fi信道状态信息的行走识别与行走参数估计

行走是日常生活中最常见的行为之一,它的特征可以反映人的身份、健康等重要信息.例如,行走的速度、方向、步数、步长等细粒度的参数可以为室内追踪、步态分析、老人看护等情境感知应用提供关键信息.因此,在近几年中,利用环境中已有的Wi-Fi信号对行走进行感知受到了研究人员的广泛关注.为了利用Wi-Fi信号感知行走,当前的方法都需要进行大量的行走数据采集,通过经验观察或者离线学习,提取信号特征来识别行走以及估计行走参数.由于缺乏理论指导,所提取信号特征较为间接且往往包含与环境和感知目标相关的冗余信息,所以当环境和感知目标发生变化时,系统需要重新进行学习,使其难以被应用于无线环境易变的真实场景中.不同于以往工作,首次在不需要任何预训练的情况下,利用环境中已有的Wi-Fi信号实现了在连续活动中对行走行为的精准识别,并且能够同时精确地估计行走的速度、方向、步数、步长等多维信息,为上层情境感知应用提供关键的上下文信息.特别地,通过分析人在行走过程中产生的多普勒效应和Wi-Fi信道状态信息（channel state information）之间的关系,建立基本的多普勒速度运动模型,揭示了行走行为和信道状态信息变化之间的理论关联.同时,基于该模型,通过多重信号分离（multiple signal classification）算法从信道状态信息中提取出了与环境和感知目标均无关、仅与人运动状态相关的信号特征——多普勒速度.最后,通过深入研究多普勒速度和人的行走真实速度之间的映射关系,提出了基于多普勒速度的行走识别与细粒度的行走参数估计方法,且经过在不同环境中、由不同实验者进行的大量实验也表明了行走识别和行走参数估计方法的准确性和鲁棒性.其中,对于行走识别的准确率达到了95.5%,行走速度大小估计的相对中位误差为12.2%,方向估计的中位误差为9°,步数统计的准确率达90%,步长估计的中位误差为0.12m.