New drift reset method for pedestrian tracking with a low-cost IMU

In this work, we study the pedestrian position tracking problem using a foot-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU consists of a tri-axis rate-gyro, a tri-axis accelerometer and a tri-axis magnetometer. The magnetometer is used for constructing a global reference frame at the initial phase. The pedestrian orientation and position are estimated by integrating signals of the rate-gyro and the accelerometer. Since the integration operation usually introduces unbounded drift errors, a new drift reset method derived from a constant-ground-normal condition is proposed to compensate for the accumulated drift error. Furthermore, a temperature compensation (TC) method is described which can alleviate the rate-gyro error due to temperature variation. Real experiments have been conducted with six subjects to test the performance of the proposed method and the results show the promising performance of the proposed tracking system.