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contribution to the task of determining
useful position information.
3.
Industrial
MEMS
inertial
measurement units (IMUs) are
advancing in performance, size,
cost-effectiveness, and integration
(no compromise) to uniquely enable
critical applications such as first
responder.
This works reasonably well outside,
but in a challenged urban environment
or indoors, GPS isn’t available.
Couple that with the poor quality of
other available sensors, and it leaves
a large gap or “uncertainty” in the
quality of the position information.
Advanced filters and algorithms are
typically employed to merge these
sensors, but without either additional
sensors or better-quality sensors, the
software does little to actually close
the uncertainty gap. Ultimately, it
significantly lowers the confidence
in the reported position. This is
conceptually illustrated in Fig. 4.
4. Smartphone-based pedestrian
navigation relies primarily on GPS,
with supplemental but not optimized
pre-embedded sensors. This leaves
a significant gap in high-confidence,
or reliable, coverage of motion
detection, which algorithms alone
cannot fix.
In contrast, the industrial dead-
reckoning scenario, such as
first responder, is designed for
performance, with system definition
and component selection guided
by specific accuracy requirements.
Significantly better-quality inertial
Figure 3. Industrial MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs)
are advancing in performance, size, cost-effectiveness, and
integration (no compromise) to uniquely enable critical
applications such as first responder
Figure 4. Smartphone-based pedestrian
navigation relies primarily on GPS,
with supplemental but not optimized
pre-embedded sensors. This leaves
a significant gap in high-confidence, or
reliable, coverage of motion detection,
which algorithms alone cannot fix
New-Tech Magazine Europe l 37