CrowdFusion: Multi-Signal Fusion SLAM Positioning Leveraging Visible Light

With the fast development of location-based services, an ubiquitous indoor positioning approach with high accuracy and low calibration has become increasingly important. In this work, we target on a crowdsourcing approach with zero calibration effort based on visible light, magnetic field and WiFi to achieve sub-meter accuracy. We propose a CrowdFusion Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) comprised of coarse-grained and fine-grained trace merging respectively based on the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) SLAM and GraphSLAM. ICP SLAM is proposed to correct the relative locations and directions of crowdsourcing traces and GraphSLAM is further adopted for fine-grained pose optimization. In CrowdFusion SLAM, visible light is used to accurately detect loop closures and magnetic field to extend the coverage. According to the merged traces, we construct a radio map with visible light and WiFi fingerprints. An enhanced particle filter fusing inertial sensors, visible light, WiFi and floor plan is designed, in which visible light fingerprinting is used to improve the accuracy and increase the resampling/rebooting efficiency. We evaluate CrowdFusion based on comprehensive experiments. The evaluation results show a mean accuracy of 0.67m for the merged traces and 0.77m for positioning, merely replying on crowdsourcing traces without professional calibration

Evaluating indoor positioning systems in a shopping mall : the lessons learned from the IPIN 2018 competition

The Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) conference holds an annual competition in which indoor localization systems from different research groups worldwide are evaluated empirically. The objective of this competition is to establish a systematic evaluation methodology with rigorous metrics both for real-time (on-site) and post-processing (off-site) situations, in a realistic environment unfamiliar to the prototype developers. For the IPIN 2018 conference, this competition was held on September 22nd, 2018, in Atlantis, a large shopping mall in Nantes (France). Four competition tracks (two on-site and two off-site) were designed. They consisted of several 1 km routes traversing several floors of the mall. Along these paths, 180 points were topographically surveyed with a 10 cm accuracy, to serve as ground truth landmarks, combining theodolite measurements, differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and 3D scanner systems. 34 teams effectively competed. The accuracy score corresponds to the third quartile (75th percentile) of an error metric that combines the horizontal positioning error and the floor detection. The best results for the on-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 11.70 m (Track 1) and 5.50 m (Track 2), while the best results for the off-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 0.90 m (Track 3) and 1.30 m (Track 4). These results showed that it is possible to obtain high accuracy indoor positioning solutions in large, realistic environments using wearable light-weight sensors without deploying any beacon. This paper describes the organization work of the tracks, analyzes the methodology used to quantify the results, reviews the lessons learned from the competition and discusses its future

Indoor pedestrian dead reckoning calibration by visual tracking and map information

Currently, Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) systems are becoming more attractive in market of indoor positioning. This is mainly due to the development of cheap and light Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) on smartphones and less requirement of additional infrastructures in indoor areas. However, it still faces the problem of drift accumulation and needs the support from external positioning systems. Vision-aided inertial navigation, as one possible solution to that problem, has become very popular in indoor localization with satisfied performance than individual PDR system. In the literature however, previous studies use fixed platform and the visual tracking uses feature-extraction-based methods. This paper instead contributes a distributed implementation of positioning system and uses deep learning for visual tracking. Meanwhile, as both inertial navigation and optical system can only provide relative positioning information, this paper contributes a method to integrate digital map with real geographical coordinates to supply absolute location. This hybrid system has been tested on two common operation systems of smartphones as iOS and Android, based on corresponded data collection apps respectively, in order to test the robustness of method. It also uses two different ways for calibration, by time synchronization of positions and heading calibration based on time steps. According to the results, localization information collected from both operation systems has been significantly improved after integrating with visual tracking data

WiFi 및 BLE RSS 기반의 실내 측위 성능 향상

학위논문 (석사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2015. 8. 권태경.최근 스마트폰이 많이 보급화되면서 사용자의 위치에 기반한 서비스들이 많이 각광받게 되면서 매우 흥미로운 주제가 되었다. 일반적인 실내 측위 시스템들은 주변 앵커 노드(예를 들어, Wi-Fi 액세스 포인트와 같은 이미 위치가 알려진 노드)를 활용한 핑거프린팅 기법이나 삼각측량/삼변측량을 활용하기도 한다. 다른 측위 자원으로 모바일 디바이스의 관성센서 및 지자기센서를 활용한 PDR(Pedestrian-Dead-Reckoning)을 이용하여 사용자의 위치를 지속적으로 추정하는 방식이 있다. 그러나, 실내 환경에서 일어날 수 있는 다양한 페이딩 현상으로 인한 WiFi 신호 세기의 변동이 존재하고, 대규모 공간에서는 핑거프린트 간의 차이가 크지 않아서 측위에 어려움이 있다. 또한, PDR을 이용한 측위의 경우 센서 자체가 가지고 있는 에러나 강자성을 띈 외부적 요인으로 인해 부정확한 측위 결과를 나타낼 수 있다, 본 논문에서는, WiFi, PDR, BLE를 융합한 효율적인 측위 시스템을 제안한다. 기본적으로 PDR에 기반하여 사용자의 위치를 파악하고, 시간이 지남에 따라 누적되는 에러를 Wi-Fi 핑거프린팅 기법을 활용하여 보정한다. 또한, 서비스 지역에서 WiFi 측위 오차가 크게 나타날 수 있는 지점을 찾는 라디오맵 분석 알고리즘을 제안한다. 이러한 지점에 BLE 비콘(beacon)을 설치하여 랜드마크로 활용하여 측위 오차를 줄인다.Recent years, indoor localization becomes a very hot topic. Indoor localization systems usually rely on different technologies, including distance measurement to nearby anchor nodes (nodes with known positions, e.g., Wi-Fi access points), PDR (Pedestrian-Dead-Reckoning). To improve the accuracy, various researches have been carried out. However, the precision of the current popular indoor localization systems can be poor, due to the low precision of PDR, Wi-Fi RSS fluctuation, and the difficulty in localizing a user in large-scale space. In our framework, we locate users location based on PDR (Pedestrian-Dead-Reckoning) and calibrate it with Wi-Fi localization point. Aiming at improving the accuracy, we exploit BLE beacons as landmarks in our indoor localization system, to narrow the Wi-Fi Fingerprints scanning range. We put BLE landmarks at the locations with poor Wi-Fi localization accuracy. To enlarge BLE landmark's sensor field, we set each BLE beacon with a continuously changing Tx Power. We did various experiments to evaluate the performance of our proposed framework and the accuracy is improved quite a lot.Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Background and Related Work 4 2.1 PDR based and Wi-Fi Fingerprints based Localization 4 2.2 Improved framework with BLE beacons 6 3. Improved Framework based on Wi-Fi and BLE RSS 7 3.1 PDR as basic mechanism 8 3.2 Coarse-grained calibration with Wi-Fi localization point 10 3.2.1 Wi-Fi Fingerprint matching 10 3.2.2 Similarity Computation between the fingerprints 12 3.2.3 Methods for Coarse-grained calibration 13 3.3 BLE Node Deployment 15 3.3.1 Wi-Fi Grid Scoring 17 3.3.2 Final Score 19 3.3.3 Selection of the deployment location 20 4. Evaluation and Performance 21 4.1 Evaluation 21 4.2 Result of the Framework Performance 23 4.2.1 PDR calibrated by Wi-Fi localization only 24 4.2.2 PDR with BLE Landmark Calibration 25 4.2.3 BLE Landmark Calibration with changing Tx Power 26 5. Conclusion 28 5.1 Conclusion 28 5.2 Future Works 28Maste

Leveraging Transfer Learning for Robust Multimodal Positioning Systems using Smartphone Multi-sensor Data

Indoor positioning has been widely researched in recent years due to its high demand for developing localization services and its complexity in GPS-denied environments. However, the diversity of indoor spaces and temporal variation of local conditions impose the need for building specific and periodic calibrations at high cost for deployment and maintenance of these localization systems. A robust positioning solution that overcomes these challenges is yet to be available. Previous systems achieve good performance when specializing their solution to the unique characteristics of the deployment site. The drive is now to automatically model these localization solutions on the sensor data from each site with the least amount of effort. We propose to accelerate the model adaptation to new deployment sites by using transfer learning of a multimodal deep neural network architecture. We demonstrate that the required training data is drastically reduced compared to training the model from scratch, while also boosting its accuracy, due to the additional knowledge from pretraining on other sites. The resulting model is also fault-tolerant, showing good performance in missing modalities experiment. Our research opens the way toward scalable and cost efficient localization systems

사물인터넷을 위한 무선 실내 측위 알고리즘

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022.2. 김성철.실내 위치 기반 서비스는 스마트폰을 이용한 실내에서의 경로안내, 스마트 공장에서의 자원 관리, 실내 로봇의 자율주행 등 많은 분야에 접목될 수 있으며, 사물인터넷 응용에도 필수적인 기술이다. 다양한 위치 기반 서비스를 구현하기 위해서는 정확한 위치 정보가 필요하며, 적합한 거리 및 위치를 추정 기술이 핵심적이다. 야외에서는 위성항법시스템을 이용해서 위치 정보를 획득할 수 있다. 본 학위논문에서는 와이파이 기반 측위 기술에 대해 다룬다. 구체적으로, 전파의 신호 세기 및 도달 시간을 이용한 정밀한 실내 위치 추정을 위한 세 가지 기술에 대해 다룬다. 먼저, 비가시경로 환경에서의 거리 추정 정확도를 향상시켜 거리 기반 측위의 정확도를 향상시키는 하이브리드 알고리즘을 제안한다. 제안하 알고리즘은듀얼 밴드 대역의 신호세기를 감쇄량을 측정하여 거리 기반 측위 기법을 적용할 때, 거리 추정부 단계만을 데이터 기반 학습을 이용한 깊은 신경망 회귀 모델로 대체한 방안이다. 적절히 학습된 깊은 회귀 모델의 사용으로 비가시경로 환경에서 발생하는 거리 추정 오차를 효과적으로 감소시킬 수 있으며, 결과적으로 위치 추정 오차 또한 감소시켰다. 제안한 방법을 실내 광선추적 기반 모의실험으로 평가했을 때, 기존 기법들에 비해서 위치 추정 오차를 중간값을 기준으로 22.3% 이상 줄일 수 있음을 검증했다. 추가적으로, 제안한 방법은 실내에서의 AP 위치변화 등에 강인함을 확인했다. 다음으로, 본 논문에서는 비가시경로에서 단일 대역 수신신호세기를 측정했을 때 비가시경로가 많은 실내 환경에서 위치 추정 정확도를 높이기 위한 방안을 제안한다. 단일 대역 수신신호세기를 이용하는 방안은 기존에 이용되는 와이파이, 블루투스, 직비 등의 기반시설에 쉽게 적용될 수 있기 때문에 널리 이용된다. 하지만 신호 세기의 단일 경로손실 모델을 이용한 거리 추정은 상당한 오차를 지녀서 위치 추정 정확도를 감소시킨다. 이러한 문제의 원인은 단일 경로손실 모델로는 실내에서의 복잡한 전파 채널 특성을 반영하기 어렵기 때문이다. 본 연구에서는 실내 위치 추정을 위한 목적으로, 중첩된 다중 상태 경로 감쇄 모델을 새롭게 제시한다. 제안한 모델은 가시경로 및 비가시경로에서의 채널 특성을 고려하여 잠재적인 후보 상태들을 지닌다. 한 순간의 수신 신호 세기 측정치에 대해 각 기준 기지국별로 최적의 경로손실 모델 상태를 결정하는 효율적인 방안을 제시한다. 이를 위해 기지국별 경로손실모델 상태의 조합에 따른 측위 결과를 평가할 지표로서 비용함수를 정의하였다. 각 기지국별 최적의 채널 모델을 찾는데 필요한 계산 복잡도는 기지국 수의 증가에 따라 기하급수적으로 증가하는데, 유전 알고리즘을 이용한 탐색을 적용하여 계산량을 억제하였다. 실내 광선추적 모의실험을 통한 검증과 실측 결과를 이용한 검증을 진행하였으며, 제안한 방안은 실제 실내 환경에서 기존의 기법들에 비해 위치 추정 오차를 약 31% 감소시켰으며 평균적으로 1.92 m 수준의 정확도를 달성함을 확인했다. 마지막으로 FTM 프로토콜을 이용한 실내 위치 추적 알고리즘에 대해 연구하였다. 스마트폰의 내장 관성 센서와 와이파이 통신에서 제공하는 FTM 프로토콜을 통한 거리 추정을 이용하여 실내에서 사용자의 위치를 추적할 수 있다. 하지만 실내의 복잡한 다중경로 환경으로 인한 피크 검출 실패는 거리 측정치에 편향성을 유발한다. 또한 사용하는 디바이스의 종류에 따라 예상치 못한 거리 오차가 발생할 수있다. 본 논문에서는 실제 환경에서 FTM 거리 추정을 이용할 때 발생할 수 있는 오차들을 고려하고 이를 보상하는 방안에 대해 제시한다. 확장 칼만 필터와 결합하여 FTM 결과를 사전필터링 하여 이상값을 제거하고, 거리 측정치의 편향성을 제거하여 위치 추적 정확도를 향상시킨다. 실내에서의 실험 결과 제안한 알고리즘은 거치 측정치의 편향성을 약 44-65% 감소시켰으며 최종적으로 사용자의 위치를 서브미터급으로 추적할 수 있음을 검증했다.Indoor location-based services (LBS) can be combined with various applications such as indoor navigation for smartphone users, resource management in smart factories, and autonomous driving of robots. It is also indispensable for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. For various LBS, accurate location information is essential. Therefore, a proper ranging and positioning algorithm is important. For outdoors, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is available to provide position information. However, the GNSS is inappropriate indoors owing to the issue of the blocking of the signals from satellites. It is necessary to develop a technology that can replace GNSS in GNSS-denied environments. Among the various alternative systems, the one of promising technology is to use a Wi-Fi system that has already been applied to many commercial devices, and the infrastructure is in place in many regions. In this dissertation, Wi-Fi based indoor localization methods are presented. In the specific, I propose the three major issues related to accurate indoor localization using received signal strength (RSS) and fine timing measurement (FTM) protocol in the 802.11 standard for my dissertation topics. First, I propose a hybrid localization algorithm to boost the accuracy of range-based localization by improving the ranging accuracy under indoor non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. I replaced the ranging part of the rule-based localization method with a deep regression model that uses data-driven learning with dual-band received signal strength (RSS). The ranging error caused by the NLOS conditions was effectively reduced by using the deep regression method. As a consequence, the positioning error could be reduced under NLOS conditions. The performance of the proposed method was verified through a ray-tracing-based simulation for indoor spaces. The proposed scheme showed a reduction in the positioning error of at least 22.3% in terms of the median root mean square error. Next, I study on positioning algorithm that considering NLOS conditions for each APs, using single band RSS measurement. The single band RSS information is widely used for indoor localization because they can be easily implemented by using existing infrastructure like Wi-Fi, Blutooth, or Zigbee. However, range estimation with a single pathloss model produces considerable errors, which degrade the positioning performance. This problem mainly arises because the single pathloss model cannot reflect diverse indoor radio wave propagation characteristics. In this study, I develop a new overlapping multi-state model to consider multiple candidates of pathloss models including line-of-sight (LOS) and NLOS states, and propose an efficient way to select a proper model for each reference node involved in the localization process. To this end, I formulate a cost function whose value varies widely depending on the choice of pathloss model of each access point. Because the computational complexity to find an optimal channel model for each reference node exponentially increases with the number of reference nodes, I apply a genetic algorithm to significantly reduce the complexity so that the proposed method can be executed in real-time. Experimental validations with ray-tracing simulations and RSS measurements at a real site confirm the improvement of localization accuracy for Wi-Fi in indoor environments. The proposed method achieves up to 1.92~m mean positioning error under a practical indoor environment and produces a performance improvement of 31.09\% over the benchmark scenario. Finally, I investigate accurate indoor tracking algorithm using FTM protocol in this dissertation. By using the FTM ranging and the built-in sensors in a smartphone, it is possible to track the user's location in indoor. However, the failure of first peak detection due to the multipath effect causes a bias in the FTM ranging results in the practical indoor environment. Additionally, the unexpected ranging error dependent on device type also degrades the indoor positioning accuracy. In this study, I considered the factors of ranging error in the FTM protocol in practical indoor environment, and proposed a method to compensate ranging error. I designed an EKF-based tracking algorithm that adaptively removes outliers from the FTM result and corrects bias to increase positioning accuracy. The experimental results verified that the proposed algorithm reduces the average ofthe ranging bias by 43-65\% in an indoor scenarios, and can achieve the sub-meter accuracy in average route mean squared error of user's position in the experiment scenarios.Abstract i Contents iv List of Tables vi List of Figures vii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 Hybrid Approach for Indoor Localization Using Received Signal Strength of Dual-BandWi-Fi 6 2.1 Motivation 6 2.2 Preliminary 8 2.3 System model 11 2.4 Proposed Ranging Method 13 2.5 Performance Evaluation 16 2.5.1 Ray-Tracing-Based Simulation 16 2.5.2 Analysis of the Ranging Accuracy 21 2.5.3 Analysis of the Neural Network Structure 25 2.5.4 Analysis of Positioning Accuracy 26 2.6 Summary 29 3 Genetic Algorithm for Path Loss Model Selection in Signal Strength Based Indoor Localization 31 3.1 Motivation 31 3.2 Preliminary 34 3.2.1 RSS-based Ranging Techniques 35 3.2.2 Positioning Technique 37 3.3 Proposed localization method 38 3.3.1 Localization Algorithm with Overlapped Multi-State Path Loss Model 38 3.3.2 Localization with Genetic Algorithm-Based Search 41 3.4 Performance evaluation 46 3.4.1 Numerical simulation 50 3.4.2 Experimental results 56 3.5 Summary 60 4 Indoor User Tracking with Self-calibrating Range Bias Using FTM Protocol 62 4.1 Motivation 62 4.2 Preliminary 63 4.2.1 FTM ranging 63 4.2.2 PDR-based trajectory estimation 65 4.3 EKF design for adaptive compensation of ranging bias 66 4.4 Performance evaluation 69 4.4.1 Experimental scenario 69 4.4.2 Experimental results 70 4.5 Summary 75 5 Conclusion 76 Abstract (In Korean) 89박

An Indoor Localization and Tracking System Using Successive Weighted RSS Projection

This letter proposes a novel successive weighted received signal strength (RSS) indoor localization and tracking system that projects previous time instance estimated mobile device (MD) position to provide projected RSS values. Such RSS projection increases the number of available RSS from Nm to Nm + N AP , where N AP is the total number of access points and Nm is the number of RSS values measured by MD, ranging from 0 to N AP . Our proposed system thus resolves the issues associated with insufficient or no RSS values received by MD. Inertial navigation system (INS) is merged with RSS localization system to provide a weighted fusion of projected and measured RSS values. The weighting factors are derived based on the INS and RSS localization accuracy where the former is initially accurate but deteriorates with time and the latter is time-independent but environment-dependent. The proposed system was tested in indoor environments and outperformed other existing localization systems such as RSS and INS fusion using extended Kalman filter and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) selection scheme, especially in heavy multipath environment, by 42% and 75%, respectively