User-friendly heading estimation for arbitrary smartphone orientations

摘要

For accurate indoor positioning, a heading estimation method that does not depend on smartphone orientation has been developed. While prior methods require the smartphone to be fixed in a certain orientation before processing, the proposed method works with the smartphone in any orientation. We utilize gyroscope data from three axes and use a low-pass filter to eliminate movement noise. Experimental results show that our method has an average error rate of just 3-5% in positioning distance for various smartphone orientations (held in the user's hand, belt pouch, side pants pocket, and back pants pocket). Using this method gives smartphone users a greater degree of freedom because they do not have to hold the device in a pre-defined orientation to obtain a reliable heading estimate.