Improving Pedestrian Navigation in Urban Environment Using Augmented Reality and Landmark Recognition.

Pedestrian navigation in an urban environment based on traditional digital mapping systems is constrained by the inherent limitations of existing online mapping services. The major challenges include the reliance on global positioning system (GPS), whose signals are not received well in some locations, and the inferior user experience caused by the lack of information about unknown surroundings. This article describes the design and development of a markerless augmented reality-based pedestrian navigation system that can handle navigation even in the absence of GPS signals. It improves the 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 GPS signals, a novel user localization method utilizing a step count-based distance estimator is proposed. The experimental results show the location accuracy of 2.3 meters on average and the increase in step count detection accuracy of nearly 0.5% in comparison with existing technologies available in smartwatches, and an average latency of 74 milliseconds in system response in an urban environment. The proposed solution can be used as a mobile application on smartphones and has the potential to contribute to the smart city-related standardization activities of ITU-T Study Group 16.