NAVIO - A Navigation Service for Pedestrains

In the research project NAVIO (Pedestrian Navigation Systems in Combined Indoor/Outdoor Environments) at our university (Vienna University of Technology), we are working on the improvement of navigation services for pedestrians. We are mainly focusing on the information aspect of location-based services, i.e., on the user\u27s task at hand and the support of the user\u27s decisions by information provided by navigation services. Specifications allow us to select appropriate sensor data and to integrate data when and where needed, to propose context-dependent routes fitting to partly conflicting interests and goals as well as to select appropriate communication methods in terms of supporting the user by various multimedia cartography forms. In this paper, these tasks are addressed in three different work packages: Integrated positioning, Pedestrian route modeling, and Multimedia route communication. In this paper we will concentrate on the findings of the first work package. For continuous positioning of a pedestrian suitable location, technologies include GNSS and indoor location techniques, cellular phone positioning, dead reckoning sensors (e.g. magnetic compass, gyro and accelerometers) for measurement of heading and travelled distance as well as barometric pressure sensors for height determination. The integration of these sensors in a modern multi-sensor system can be performed using an adapted Kalman filter. To test and to demonstrate our approach, we take a use case scenario into account, i.e., the guidance of visitors to departments of the University. The results of simulation studies and practical tests will confirm whether such a service can achieve a high level of performance for the guidance of pedestrians in urban areas and in mixed indoor and outdoor environments