Indoor navigation using Smartphone technology: A future challenge or an actual possibility?

Abstract

Today knowing where we are has become an important issue for people who interactively and dynamically live and work in urban cities. Each user has a very complete and complex set of technologies for positioning and navigating in his/her hands which are simple to use even if they are not good at positioning or in Geomatics. Accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, pressure sensors, GNSS receivers, digital cameras are all tools which can be used for defining a three-dimensional position and their integration could be the key point of this technology. Indoor positioning is the latest challenge to be used whenever GNSS positioning is not always available or null, even using high sensitivity sensors. An alternative solution must be found starting from determining the other available solutions in Smartphone devices. An example of indoor positioning could be obtained by using the Image Based Navigation (IBN) approach, where the coordinates of our device are defined using the photogrammetric principle. Several papers demonstrate that IBN can be an useful approach for positioning and how the device in Smartphones can work indoors. In this study, the authors attempt to combine the IBN method with the potentiality of Smartphone internal sensors, in order to verify their performance in indoor positioning.