Android accelerometer accuracy (Inertial navigation)

Question

I was looking into implementing an Inertial Navigation System for an Android phone, which I realise is hard given the accelerometer accuracy, and constant fluctuation of rea

Answer 1

You get position by integrating the linear acceleration twice but the error is horrible. It is useless in practice.

Here is an explanation why (Google Tech Talk) at 23:20. I highly recommend this video.

It is not the accelerometer noise that causes the problem but the gyro white noise, see subsection 6.2.3 Propagation of Errors. (By the way, you will need the gyroscopes too.)

As for indoor positioning, I have found these useful:

RSSI-Based Indoor Localization and Tracking Using Sigma-Point Kalman Smoothers

Pedestrian Tracking with Shoe-Mounted Inertial Sensors

Enhancing the Performance of Pedometers Using a Single Accelerometer

I have no idea how these methods would perform in real-life applications or how to turn them into a nice Android app.

A similar question is this.

UPDATE:

Apparently there is a newer version than the above Oliver J. Woodman, "An introduction to inertial navigation", his PhD thesis:

Pedestrian Localisation for Indoor Environments