A mobile camera-based evaluation method of inertial measurement units on smartphones

Abstract

In order to support navigation, gesture detection, and augmented reality, modern smartphones contain inertial measurement units (IMU) consisting of accelerometers and gyroscopes. Although the accuracy of these sensors directly affects the soundness of mobile applications, no standardized tests exist to verify the correctness of the retrieved sensor data. For this purpose, we present a novel benchmark, which utilizes the camera of the phone as a reference to estimate the quality of its sensor data fusion. Our experiments do not require special equipment and reveal significant discrepancies between different phone models.