Indoor positioning for visually impaired people based on smartphones

Abstract

Autonomous navigation is a critical factor for visually impaired people. Outdoors, positioning based on ubiquitous signals is available, contrary indoors no ubiquitous navigation solution does exist. Because of the implementation of screen-reader software into mobile devices, visually impaired people start using smartphones. This paper focuses on the abilities of an indoor positioning purely based on sensors already present in smartphones nowadays. Therefore, algorithms specifically designed for low-cost sensors are developed. The outcome of these algorithms, which process the accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and barometer data and a WiFi fingerprinting, is integrated within a mathematical filter to get a final position and heading information. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.