Indoor Localization using Computer Vision and Visual-Inertial Odometry

Indoor wayfinding is a major challenge for people with visual impairments, who are often unable to see visual cues such as informational signs, landmarks and structural features that people with normal vision rely on for wayfinding. We describe a novel indoor localization approach to facilitate wayfinding that uses a smartphone to combine computer vision and a dead reckoning technique known as visual-inertial odometry (VIO). The approach uses sign recognition to estimate the user’s location on the map whenever a known sign is recognized, and VIO to track the user’s movements when no sign is