VISION-AIDED CONTEXT-AWARE FRAMEWORK FOR PERSONAL NAVIGATION SERVICES

Abstract. The ubiquity of mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet-PCs) has encouraged the use of location-based services (LBS) that are relevant to the current location and context of a mobile user. The main challenge of LBS is to find a pervasive and accurate personal navigation system (PNS) in different situations of a mobile user. In this paper, we propose a method of personal navigation for pedestrians that allows a user to freely move in outdoor environments. This system aims at detection of the context information which is useful for improving personal navigation. The context information for a PNS consists of user activity modes (e.g. walking, stationary, driving, and etc.) and the mobile device orientation and placement with respect to the user. After detecting the context information, a low-cost integrated positioning algorithm has been employed to estimate pedestrian navigation parameters. The method is based on the integration of the relative user’s motion (changes of velocity and heading angle) estimation based on the video image matching and absolute position information provided by GPS. A Kalman filter (KF) has been used to improve the navigation solution when the user is walking and the phone is in his/her hand. The Experimental results demonstrate the capabilities of this method for outdoor personal navigation systems.