Enhanced Heuristic Drift Elimination with Adaptive Zero-Velocity Detection and Heading Correction Algorithms for Pedestrian Navigation

Abstract

As pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR), based on foot-mounted inertial sensors, suffers from accumulated error in velocity and heading, an improved heuristic drift elimination (iHDE) with a zero-velocity update (ZUPT) algorithm was proposed for simultaneously reducing the error in heading and velocity in complex paths, i.e., with pathways oriented at 45°, curved corridors, and wide areas. However, the iHDE algorithm does not consider the changes in pedestrian movement modes, and it can deteriorate when a pedestrian walks along a straight path without a pre-defined dominant direction. To solve these two problems, we propose enhanced heuristic drift elimination (eHDE) with an adaptive zero-velocity update (AZUPT) algorithm and novel heading correction algorithm. The relationships between the magnitude peaks of the y-axis angular rate and the detection thresholds were established only using the readings of the three-axis accelerometer and the three-axis gyroscopic, and a mechanism for constructing temporary dominant directions in real time was introduced. Real experiments were performed and the results showed that the proposed algorithm can improve the still-phase detection accuracy of a pedestrian at different movement motions and outperforms the iHDE algorithm in complex paths with many straight features.