AAMPL: Accelerometer augmented mobile phone localization

Abstract

A variety of mobile phone applications are on the rise, many of which utilize physical location to express the "context" of information. This paper argues that physical location alone, unless remarkably precise, may not be sufficient to express this context. Even slight localization errors may cause a mobile phone to be placed in a grocery store, as opposed to its actual location in an adjacent coffee shop. Applications such as location specific advertisements, can get affected. This paper proposes accelerometer augmented mobile phone localization (AAMPL), a system that uses accelerometer signatures to place mobile phones in the right context. Early evaluation on Nokia N95 phones shows that AAMPL can correct locations derived from Google Maps. We believe that AAMPL can be extended to additional sensors (like light and sound) to further aid GPS-free localization.