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Comparison of EMG-based and Accelerometer-based Speed Estimation Methods in Pedestrian Dead Reckoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2011

Wei Chen*
Affiliation:
(Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China) (Department of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish Geodetic Institute, Masala, Finland)
Ruizhi Chen
Affiliation:
(Department of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish Geodetic Institute, Masala, Finland)
Xiang Chen*
Affiliation:
(Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
Xu Zhang
Affiliation:
(Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
Yuwei Chen
Affiliation:
(Department of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish Geodetic Institute, Masala, Finland)
Jianyu Wang
Affiliation:
(Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China) (Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China)
Zhongqian Fu
Affiliation:
(Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
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Abstract

In low-cost self-contained pedestrian navigation systems, traditional Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) solutions utilize accelerometers to derive the speed as well as the distance travelled, and obtain the walking heading from magnetic compasses or gyros. However, these measurements are sensitive to instrument errors and disturbances from ambient environment. To be totally different from these signals in nature, the electromyography (EMG) signal is a typical kind of biomedical signal that measures electrical potentials generated by muscle contractions from the human body. This kind of signal would reflect muscle activities during human locomotion, so that it can not only be used for speed estimation, but also disclose the azimuth information from the contractions of lumbar muscles when changing the direction of walking. Therefore, investigating how to utilize the EMG signal for PDR is interesting and promising. In this paper, a novel EMG-based speed estimation method is presented, including setup of the EMG equipment, pre-processing procedure, stride detection and stride length estimation. Furthermore, this method suggested is compared with the traditional one based on accelerometers by means of several field tests. The results demonstrate that the EMG-based method is effective and its performance in PDR can be comparable to that of the accelerometer-based method.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 2011
Figure 0

Figure 1. Statistical features of acceleration under different speeds.

Figure 1

Figure 2. The setup of EMG sensors (The background of the right-hand-side figure is obtained from http://www.answers.com/topic/muscle).

Figure 2

Figure 3. A typical example of pre-processing the EMG signal: (top trace) raw EMG signal from channel 1; (second trace) raw EMG signal from channel 2; (third trace) summed EMG signal; (bottom trace) pre-processed EMG signal.

Figure 3

Figure 4. The EMG signal and statistical features when walking at a continuously changing speed: (top) pre-processed EMG signal; (centre) stride period; (bottom) stride peak.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Placement of the EMG sensors and the MSP platform.

Figure 5

Figure 6. The nominal trajectory of the long-range test.

Figure 6

Figure 7. Architecture of the comparative algorithm.

Figure 7

Figure 8. Time synchronization between the EMG and MSP systems.

Figure 8

Table 1. Results of the stride/step detection.

Figure 9

Table 2. Estimation results of the speed and distance travelled.

Figure 10

Figure 9. Position results of the simulated GPS gaps: (a) along track 6 by tester 1; (b) along track 6 by tester 2; (c) along the long-range trajectory by tester 1.

Figure 11

Figure 10. Horizontal difference of the simulated GPS gaps between the GPS and PDR solutions: (top) along track 6 by tester 1; (centre) along track 6 by tester 2; (bottom) along the long-range trajectory by tester 1.

Figure 12

Table 3. Positioning results of simulated GPS gaps.