New Zero-Velocity Detector for Low-Cost Inertial Pedestrian Navigation

Abstract

A new Zero Velocity Interval (ZVI) detector is proposed and investigated in this article to augment the computation of a pedestrian’s position. In a low-cost pedestrian navigation system, the position of a pedestrian can be computed by using inertial navigation algorithms. The low-cost pedestrian navigation system employs an inertial measurement unit (IMU) comprised of accelerometer and gyroscope sensors to record acceleration and attitude rate. These measurements, when integrated mathematically, yield velocity and position. Similarly, attitude rate changes to attitude. The algorithm will then be able to figure out the changes in pedestrian position with the proper attitude. However, due to its low-cost nature, these sensors are built in such a way that their measurements are easily corrupted by noise, and once integrated mathematically, the measurement error grows exponentially. Zero Velocity Update (ZUPT) algorithm is frequently used to limit these errors. It works by detecting the ZVI that occur when the foot is on the ground. Assuming that the foot on the ground should have zero velocity, any remaining velocity measurements detected during this period are considered an error and are fed back to the navigation algorithm for correction. To detect the ZVI, a few commonly used detectors, namely Angular Rate Energy (ARE), Acceleration Moving Variance (MV), Acceleration Magnitude (MAG), and Generalized Likehood Ratio Test (GLRT) were revisited. These detectors were tested with real-world datasets of walking pedestrians. Then, a new detector, the Angular Rate Moving Variance (ARMV) detector, is proposed, and its performance is compared to that of the existing detectors.