Enhancing User Experience in Pedestrian Navigation Based on Augmented Reality and Landmark Recognition

Pedestrian navigation using traditional mapping systems is constrained by the inherent limitations of existing digital online mapping services. The major challenges include complete reliance on GPS for user localization and inferior user experience caused by lack of information about the surroundings, especially in unknown environments. In this paper, we design and develop a marker-less augmented reality-based pedestrian navigation system which can handle navigation even in the absence of GPS as well as improve user experience by providing a novel landmark recognition feature, which allows users to identify nearby buildings or streets during navigation. To mitigate the absence of a GPS signal, a user localization method utilizing a step count-based distance estimator is proposed. The performance comparison with existing state of the art techniques and devices shows locational accuracy of 2.5 meters on average and a step count detection accuracy increase of nearly 0.5% with a latency of 70 milliseconds in an urban environment. The proposed solution is intended to be used as a mobile application on smartphones and has a potential to contribute to the smart city-related standardization activities of ITU-T Study Group 16.