Understanding the performance of zero velocity updates in MEMS-based pedestrian navigation

Zero Velocity Update (ZUPT) is an important update to aid an autonomous inertial pedestrian navigation. The objectives of this paper are to briefly revisit the concept of ZUPT and its importance, testing it on real walking pedestrian and comparing its performance when used with either conventional ‘Dead Reckoning approach (DR)’ or with ‘Kalman Filter approach (KF)’ as either one of these approaches is commonly used in literature. Performances were analyzed further with the inclusion of two correction modes (Linearly Weighted Interpolation and Residual Velocity). Experiments were performed using a low cost Inerital Measurement Unit (IMU) from MicroStrain (3DM-GX1). It was shown that the KF approach outperformed DRonly approach, but comparable performance with KF was noticed when DR is combined with correction mode. Finally, a combination of RV correction mode with forward KF solution was shown to improve the position output