Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 J Ambient Intell Human Comput (2019) 10:1–12 DOI 10.1007/s12652-017-0579-0 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Real time indoor localization integrating a model based pedestrian dead reckoning on smartphone and BLE beacons Lucio Ciabattoni 1  · Gabriele Foresi 1  · Andrea Monteriù 1  · Lucia Pepa 1  · Daniele Proietti Pagnotta 1  · Luca Spalazzi 1  · Federica Verdini 1   Received: 3 February 2017 / Accepted: 9 September 2017 / Published online: 15 September 2017 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017 the smartphone application is composed by three main real time threads: a model based step length estimation, head- ing determination and the fusion of beacon information to reset the position and the drift error of the PDR. In order to give soundness to our approach we frstly validated the step length smartphone app with a stereo-photogrammetric system. The whole proposed solution was then tested on ffteen healthy subjects. 1 Introduction A new era for indoor localization applications is dawn- ing thanks to mobile and wireless technologies, wearable devices and the ecosystem of connected objects (Ugolotti et al. 2013). From an engineering perspective, the problem of ofering an accurate indoor positioning service attracted a growing number of researchers during the last years (Ficco 2014; Furey et al. 2013). In fact, while the Global Posi- tioning System solved the localization problem for outdoor environments, it cannot be useful inside buildings because of the large signal attenuations (Bhattacharya et al. 2015). An accurate indoor positioning service has the potential to trans- form the experience of people while navigating indoor in several application domains, which are related, for example, to emergency, security, tourism, sport, healthcare (Bennett et al. 2016), robotics, and automation (Choi and Lee 2010). An important challenge when developing indoor localiza- tion systems is matching the solution to the specifc domain requirements in terms of both devices and performances. Among all areas, healthcare is one of the fastest growing industries in terms of digital technology usage. Increased acceptability and usability, ubiquitous accessibility to data, real time clinical outcomes, remote patient-to-physician experiences in tele-medicine and tele-rehabilitation are Abstract Mobile and pervasive computing enabled a new realm of possibilities into the indoor positioning domain. Although many candidate technologies have been proposed, no one can still adapt to every use case. A case centered design and the implementation of the solution within the specifc domain is the current research trend. With the rise of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacons, i.e., platforms used to interact digitally with the real world, more stand- ard positioning solutions are emerging in diferent contexts. However the reachable positioning accuracy with this tech- nology is still unacceptable for some real applications (e.g., in the healthcare sector or the emergency management). In this paper, an hybrid localization application coupling a real time model based Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) technique and the analysis of the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of BLE beacons is proposed. In particular, * Lucio Ciabattoni l.ciabattoni@univpm.it Gabriele Foresi g.foresi@pm.univpm.it Andrea Monteriù a.monteriu@univpm.it Lucia Pepa l.pepa@univpm.it Daniele Proietti Pagnotta d.proietti@pm.univpm.it Luca Spalazzi l.spalazzi@univpm.it Federica Verdini f.verdini@univpm.it 1 Department of Information Engineering, Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 12, 60131 Ancona, Italy