A high precision reference data set for pedestrian navigation using foot-mounted inertial sensors

In this paper we present a reference data set that we are making publicly available to the indoor navigation community. This reference data is intended for the analysis and verification of algorithms based on foot mounted inertial sensors. Furthermore, we describe our data collection methodology that is applicable to the analysis of a broad range of indoor navigation approaches. We employ a high precision optical reference system that is traditionally being used in the film industry for human motion capturing and in applications such as analysis of human motion in sports and medical rehabilitation. The data set provides measurements from a six degrees of freedom foot mounted inertial MEMS sensor array, as well as synchronous high resolution data from the optical tracking system providing ground truth for location and orientation. We show the use of this reference data set by comparing the performance of algorithms for an essential part of pedestrian dead reckoning systems for positioning, namely identification of the rest phase during the human gait cycle.