Improved Pedestrian Navigation Based on Drift-
Reduced MEMS IMU Chip
Sheng Wan, InterSense Incorporated
Eric Foxlin, InterSense Incorporated
BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Sheng Wan is a Sr. Research Engineer at InterSense,
specializing in inertial navigation. He earned his B.S. in
Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Control Systems from
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in
1983 and 1986 respectively, and earned his PhD degree in
Aerospace Engineering from West Virginia University in
2005. From 1986-99, he worked as an associate research
professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, conducting R&D works in guidance,
navigation and controls for aerial vehicles. From 1999 to
2007, he worked in various academic and industrial
research labs in North America before joining InterSense.
Eric Foxlin is Chief Technology Officer of InterSense.
He founded InterSense in 1996, based on patented inertial
motion-tracking technology which he developed at MIT.
He earned his B.S. degree in Physics (1987) from Harvard
in 1987 and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science from MIT in 1993. His current
research interests focus on inertial sensor development
and modeling, navigation algorithms, computer vision and
augmented reality.
ABSTRACT
We previously presented a prototype of a personal
navigation system called NavShoe™ which uses shoe-
mounted inertial sensors and magnetometers to achieve
GPS-denied navigation with very low drift rates in most
circumstances [1]. Zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs) were
obtained during the stance phase of each step to correct
position and velocity drift, and carefully-screened and
compensated magnetometer readings helped constrain the
heading drift of the low-cost MEMS gyroscopes.
The system worked extremely well in many
environments, but the heading accuracy would gradually
degrade in environments where no usable readings of
earth’s magnetic field can be obtained for an extended
period of time, or where distorted readings are very
difficult to distinguish and reject from the Kalman filter.
In an effort to make the NavShoe more robust and less
dependent on compass measurements which can
sometimes cause accuracy problems, we set out to design
a new IMU called NavChip™ with better performance
and smaller size than the InertiaCube3 that was used in
the original NavShoe prototype system. This paper
introduces the new NavChip sensor, and evaluates the
improvement in raw dead-reckoning performance of the
NavShoe obtained by using it, without aiding from
magnetometer, GPS or any other complementary
technology. The improvement in heading drift is
substantial, which will facilitate the development of more
robust and accurate pedestrian localization systems by
fusing the NavShoe inertial dead-reckoning data with
complementary technologies. A simplistic error
accumulation model for gyro-based dead-reckoning
systems is provided to help understand the way errors
accumulate as a function of time, distance and path.
INTRODUCTION
There is a need for a navigation system to keep track of
the location of a person on foot in environments where
GPS is unavailable or unreliable. Finding and rescuing
firefighters, miners, soldiers or others in hazardous
situations is a major motivation but additional
applications include location-aware computing, personal
navigation assistance, mobile 3-D audio, training
exercises, surveying, and mixed or augmented reality
applications.
In 2005 we presented a prototype of a personal navigation
system called NavShoe™ which uses shoe-mounted
inertial sensors to achieve GPS-denied navigation with
very acceptable drift rates of approximately 0.3% of
distance travelled in terms of return to starting point [1].
The original NavShoe prototype optionally used GPS
when available to aid and calibrate shoe-mounted MEMS
inertial and magnetic sensors, and then relied upon the
inertial sensors as the primary navigation method during
GPS outages, with zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs)
obtained during the stance phase of each step to correct
position and velocity drift, and carefully-screened and
compensated magnetometer readings to correct heading
drift.
The system worked extremely well in many
environments, but the heading accuracy would gradually
degrade in environments where no usable readings of
earth’s magnetic field can be obtained for an extended
period of time, allowing the z-gyro of the shoe-mounted
sensor to drift without correction. The rate of drift, and
thus the length of time the system can maintain good
performance in a distorted magnetic environment,
depends on various parameters of the MEMS gyroscopes
used in the foot-mounted inertial measurement unit
(IMU), including noise, bias stability, and bias random
walk. Having identified these as the primary factors
influencing the accuracy and robustness of the navigation
solution, we set out to design a new IMU called
NavChip™ with better performance and smaller size than
the InertiaCube3 that was used in the original NavShoe
prototype system. The primary focus of this paper is to
describe the new NavChip sensor, and to evaluate the
improvement in raw dead-reckoning performance using it,
without aiding from magnetometer, GPS or any other
complementary technology. In practice, most applications
will probably require hybrid systems fusing inertial dead-
reckoning with other aiding technologies, but the
integration of such sensor fusion systems is made
considerably more straightforward and robust by using
better quality dead-reckoning subsystems.
The next section provides a brief overview of the
NavShoe dead-reckoning approach using a shoe-mounted
inertial sensor with zero-velocity updates to constrain
drift. The advantage of a shoe-mounted sensor compared
to other dead-reckoning approaches using torso-mounted
sensors will be described, and a basic overview of the
algorithms for processing the inertial data is presented.
The third section introduces InterSense’s new MEMS
IMU product, the NavChip™, and provides test results for
some pre-production NavChip engineering samples to
characterize the key performance specifications, including
noise and bias stability. Also, a new statistical
characterization of drift is developed which characterizes
the RMS drift of a gyro due to all of its noise and
instability sources, as a function of unaided inertial coast
time. Because the Allan Variance of the NavChip is
dominated by flicker noise which makes it difficult to
directly extract useful parameters for Kalman filter
tuning, this aggregate drift rate can be a useful tool for
checking the process noise model used in the filter.
In the fourth section, we experimentally evaluate the
effect of these improved gyro parameters on navigation
performance. The NavShoe system is updated to
incorporate the new NavChip sensor, the Kalman filter is
tuned to take advantage of the sensor’s performance based
on parameters obtained during device characterization
tests, and several navigation trials are conducted with
both the NavChip and the InertiaCube3 in order to
quantify the degree of improvement in accuracy for both
down-range errors (attributable to accelerometer
integration error) and cross-range errors (dominated by
yaw gyro drift). By using surveyed test tracks to establish
ground-truth data, we measure the actual error
accumulation over the course of the experiments for
multiple trials with each of the two systems.
In the fifth section, a very basic error accumulation model
for the NavShoe is developed, in order to understand the
expected drift characteristics of the unaided NavShoe
sensor, and how these are influenced by gyroscope noise
and bias stability. Some Monte Carlo simulations are
performed using the model to predict the NavShoe error
accumulation as a function of distance travelled for
various walking paths.
FOOT-MOUNTED INERTIAL DEAD-RECKONING
BACKGROUND
It is impossible to keep track of pedestrian position
accurately for more than a few seconds using only
standard inertial navigation. Even a tiny drift rate in the
gyros results in a slowly growing tilt error. The horizontal
acceleration error is 9.8 m/s/s times the tilt error in
radians. Double integrating this increasing acceleration
error produces a position error which grows cubically in
time. Thus, while small inertial sensors can maintain
accuracy of a few millimeters for one second, the drift
will be hundreds of meters after just a minute or so.
Elwell [2,3] and Sher [4] proposed to circumvent this t3
drift by mounting the IMU on a boot and navigating
open-loop for only about 0.5 s at a time. During walking
each foot alternates between a stationary stance phase
lasting about 0.5 s and a moving stride phase lasting about
0.5 s. During stance phase the software detects the
relatively motionless portion of the stride and applies
zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs). As Figure 1 a) illustrates,
the periodic velocity resets effectively break the cubic-in-
time error growth and replace it with error accumulation
that is linear in the number of steps.
a)
b)
Figure 1: a) inertial position error growth with
velocity resets at each step. b) with EKF zero-velocity
pseudo-measurements
By treating the zero-velocity updates as if they were supply range and consumes about 35mA, making it
velocity measurements with a value of zero and entering suitable for battery-powered applications as well as USB
them as pseudo-measurements into an Extended Kalman bus-powered use. It is fully factory-calibrated and
Filter (EKF) navigation error corrector, significantly more temperature compensated over an operating range of -40
improvement can be obtained. As shown in Figure 1 b), to +85oC.
the Kalman filter is able to “undo” most of the error
accumulated during the stride phase of each step as soon With dimensions of 12.8 x 24 x 8.3 mm, the NavChip has
as it reaches the stance phase and receives the next zero- a volume of 2.55 cm3, compared to 15.2 cm3 for the
velocity pseudo-measurement. It does this by keeping InertiaCube3, and the mass is 7 g compared to 17 g.
track of the correlation between velocity error and
position error while they are accumulating, so when it
learns how much velocity error accumulated during the
step it can deduce the position error and correct it. Our
implementation in [1] took full advantage of this effect
and was able to achieve loop-closing accuracy of about
0.3% of walking distance. Altitude accuracy was even
more impressive, showing about 6 cm error over the
course of a 118 m indoor test.
Figure 3: Bottom and top views of NavChip surface-
NAVCHIP MEMS IMU mount package

The NavChip™ is the world’s first MEMS 6-axis inertial
measurement unit in a surface-mount chip package. Based
on breakthrough MEMS inertial sensor design, signal
processing and packaging, the NavChip achieves a level
of performance, miniaturization, and environmental
ruggedness not available in inertial measurement units
using standard off-the-shelf gyros and accelerometers.
The NavChip comes in a hermetically-sealed epoxy
surface-mount package. It operates off a wide 3.25-5.5 V
The standard tool for evaluating gyro noise and stability is
the Allan Variance plot [5]. Gyro angle random walk
(ARW), which is caused by white noise in the angular
rate output, produces an angular error whose standard
deviation grows with √t. Because the standard deviation
of the average of N samples of white noise is proportional
to 1/√N, angle random walk shows up with a slope of -1/2
on a log/log plot of Allan Deviation (square-root of Allan

Figure 2: Allan Deviation for 33 NavChip gyros

Variance). To find the magnitude of the gyro ARW in
deg/√hr, one can use the following procedure:
1) fit a line of slope -1/2 to the portion of the Allan
Deviation having that slope
2) find the value of the line at averaging time of 1 s,
and convert to deg/hr
3) multiply by 1/60
Figure 2 shows Allan Deviation plots (often informally
referred to as “root Allan Variance” or “Allan Variance”)
for 33 different samples of the NavChip gyros (3 gyros
each from the most recent 11 NavChip engineering
samples shipped). Following the above procedure, slope -
1/2 lines have been added above and below the ARW
portion of the Allan Deviation, from which it can be
calculated that the range of the ARW for these samples is
approximately from 0.17°/√hr to 0.24°/√hr.
The common definition of gyro in-run bias stability is the
lowest point on the Allan Variance curve. As shown in
Figure 2, this ranges from about 8-12°/hr for all three axes
of the NavChip’s gyro sensor. The datasets collected for
this Allan Variance analysis are only about a half-hour
long, which is insufficient to show the long term stability
behavior. That is why the Allan Variance curves become
erratic for larger averaging times: there are only a few
pair-wise data points to calculate the pair-wise variances,
so the estimates of those variances are increasingly noisy.
Figure 4: comparison of NavChip and IC3 gyro Allan
Deviations
Figure 4 shows Allan Variances for representative
samples of NavChip and InertiaCube3 gyros using data
collected for several hours, which allows plotting out to
much longer averaging times. The NavChip gyro reaches
the bottom after a few seconds and stays flat (flicker noise
floor) out to about 1000 s. There is no obvious bias
random walk component, as the tail on the right appears
to have slope +1, indicating trend. By contrast, the IC3
has a much higher ARW segment which persists with
slope -1/2 all the way until 100 s. At this point it
transitions almost immediately to a bias random walk
segment with slope +1/2. The bottom point, representing
in-run bias stability over successive 100 s averaging
periods, is 60o/hr, compared to 10o/hr for the NavChip.
Even more striking, for this sample the ARW of the IC3 is
about 5.2°/√hr compared to 0.17°/√hr for the NavChip.
This phenomenal improvement in noise floor for the
NavChip compared to standard commercial-grade MEMS
IMUs has tremendous benefits in many applications and
allows the NavChip to be calibrated much more quickly
and precisely.
Although the Allan Variance is a very useful tool for
analyzing gyro data and determining key performance
parameters, it is difficult to predict the actual gyro drift
behavior just by casual examination, especially in the case
of the NavChip which is dominated by flicker noise. To
provide an alternative view of gyro performance which is
physically meaningful and very easy to interpret even for
non-specialists, we now introduce a new type of plot
which shows “RMS Gyro Drift over Time”. To do this,
we collect a very long dataset (over 30 hours) while the
gyro remains motionless on a table at room temperature.
We then break the dataset into a collection of 30 one-hour
datasets and separately integrate each after removing an
initial bias estimate obtained by averaging a block of data
just preceding the integration period. After removal of
the starting bias, each segment is separately integrated,
resulting in an ensemble of random drift traces as seen in
Figure 10 in a later section. After a given amount of
integration time, t, the cumulative angular integration
error of the different members of the ensemble will have a
Gaussian distribution with zero mean and standard
deviation σ(t), which is plotted in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5: RMS Gyro Drift over Time
The RMS Gyro Drift plot shows the combined effects of
angle-random-walk, flicker noise, bias-random walk, and
any other gyro bias characteristics that will effect drift
performance at constant temperature and with no motion.
It is an intuitive and practical lower bound on the angular
accuracy that could possibly be obtained from open-loop
integration of a particular gyro, and provides a useful
sanity-check for any postulated stochastic process model
or simulation of the gyro’s stationary output, as will be
illustrated later in the paper. As Figure 5 shows, the RMS
drift of the NavChip gyros is approximately linear over
time, reaching about 17o in an hour, compared to about
120o in an hour for the InertiaCube3.
In addition, accelerometer noise has been reduced by a
factor of 5, which may result in slower position drift
accumulation and more accurate detection of zero-
velocity conditions for triggering ZUPTs. Significantly
for the NavShoe application, the dynamic range has been
expanded from 1200 to 2000o/s for rotation and from 4 to
11 g for acceleration, in order to accommodate high
dynamics that can sometimes be encountered by a foot-
mounted sensor, and the update rate is increased from 180
to 1000 Hz for the same reason. Table 1 shows a
comparison of key specifications between the NavChip
and IC3. Although the IC3 is an older InterSense
product, it is roughly comparable in terms of gyro bias
stability and angle random walk to most other small and
low-cost MEMS IMUs available on the market today, all
of which use similar commercial-grade MEMS
gyroscopes. In addition to size and performance benefits,
the NavChip uses less power, reducing the size of
batteries needed on the shoe.
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION
In order to verify whether the improved IMU has tangible
benefits to personal navigation using foot-mounted
inertial sensors, we conducted a small experimental study
to characterize the unaided navigation performance using
both the IC3 and NavChip. Figure 6 shows the NavShoe
demonstrator unit that was used for the experiments. It
consists of a handheld PC running a real-time
implementation of the inertial navigation and ZUPTing
algorithms described in [1], with both the magnetometer
and GPS integration capabilities turned off in order to
study the unaided (pure inertial) dead-reckoning
performance. The demonstrator also can run the location
visualization application shown on the screen, but this
was not used in the performance evaluation study.
It is worth noting that the original results reported in [1]
were obtained by post-processing in Matlab. Now we
have converted the NavShoe algorithms to efficient C
code and they can run in real-time up to 1000 Hz with
only a few percent CPU utilization on the Vaio UX-280
handheld PC. We expect the software could easily be
made to run in a cellphone or a small embedded DSP.

Table 1: Comparison of IC3 and NavChip

Spec IC3 NavChip

Gyro range 1200 2000

Accelerometer 5g 11g
Figure 6: a) Handheld PC running NavShoe
range
algorithms and visualization software b,c,d) Different
Angle 5.3°/√hr typ. 0.25°/√hr typ. sensor mounting locations on shoe were tried
Random Walk
Prior to collecting more extensive test data, various
Gyro Bias 62°/hr typ. 12°/hr typ. locations for mounting the sensor on the shoe were tried,
Stability a few of which are illustrated in Figure 6: b) embedded in
sole, c) taped to heel, d) taped to toe. We initially
Accel Bias 0.1 mg typ. 0.04 mg typ. expected that the location would have a bearing on how
Stability reliably and accurately we could determine ZUPTs, but
Operating 0 to 70°C -40 to 85°C we found no obvious performance differences as a result
Temp. of the different locations, and most of the data below were
collected by simply taping the sensor to the side of the
Size 26x38x15 mm 12.8x24x8.3 mm heel or tucking it in the laces.
(15.2 cm3) (2.55 cm3)
Another pilot experiment was conducted to evaluate the
Power 225 mW 120 mW effect of IMU data rate. The NavChip always samples its
sensors internally at 1000 Hz, but it can be configured to Figure 7 shows the results of the five trials with IC3
report data at this rate or any submultiple, in which case it overlaid together with the surveyed truth points. There is
reports an accumulated Delta-Theta and Delta-V over a marked contrast with the excellent results demonstrated
several internal i-rate samples. Walking trials were in [1], because the earlier system used the magnetometers
conducted with data reporting rates of 1000 Hz, 500 Hz, in the IC3 to correct heading drift, while here they are
333 Hz, and 200 Hz, with the NavShoe software being ignored.
integrating the inertial data and updating the EKF at the
reporting rate. As no significant differences in navigation
performance were noted, the remainder of the trials were
conducted with the 200 Hz reporting rate for the 25 truth point
walk step path
NavChip, and 180 Hz for the InertiaCube3. test point
20

For empirical evaluation of the navigation accuracy we

15
needed to establish a test track with known “ground truth”
locations along it. To do this, we took advantage of a
10
large portion of our office building which is covered with

y (m)
12” linoleum floor tiles. The tiles appear to form a very 5
precise and regular square grid, which we confirmed by
measuring across 50 tiles with a tape measure and 0
verifying a distance of 50’ within ¼”. We then counted
out the tiles and marked 27 test points along a 160 m long -5
closed loop path with yellow stickers. Subjects were
instructed to walk in straight lines from test point to test -10
-30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
point, and mark each point with a double heel lift so that x (m)
it could later be detected in our analysis software as two
footstep locations that are within a few centimeters from Figure 8: Results with NavChip
each other.
Figure 8 shows the results for 12 trials using the NavChip
Three subjects participated, and tested two different IMU (one trial had to be thrown out because the sensor
NavChips and two InertiaCube3 units. A total of 13 trials was poorly taped to the shoe and fell off in the middle).
were run with the NavChips, and 5 trials with the IC3s. As hoped, there is a significant improvement in unaided
Since the initial heading value was arbitrary, all the test navigation performance. It will still be necessary to aid
results were aligned by using the first two test points to the NavChip with some other sensor (e.g. magnetometer
establish the initial heading. After the subject progresses or ranging sensor) for accurate long-term navigation
beyond the second test point, no further manipulation is performance, but even very infrequent updates will be
performed and the dead-reckoning system is free to drift. sufficient, which greatly eases the task of rejecting
spurious data.

Horizontal Positioning Error at Test Points

3
25

2.5
20

2
15
Position Error (m)

10 1.5
y (m)

5 1

0
0.5

-5
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
-10 Distance Traveled (m)

-30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 Figure 9: Horizontal positioning errors at each test
x (m) point from 12 NavChip trials
Figure 7: Results with InertiaCube3
Figure 9 shows the horizontal positioning errors at each
test point, plotted against elapsed travel distance.
Interestingly, the errors increase for the first 90 meters or but it will generate approximately the right RMS heading
so, and then they start to decrease. It is fairly intuitive error at each time.
why this happens after looking at trajectories in Figure 8,
but it is in stark contrast to the assumption that errors Integration of Angular Rate
40
accumulate as a percentage of distance travelled, which is
the way most dead-reckoning manufacturers state their 30
accuracy specifications, and most acquisition programs
state their requirements. Another interesting observation 20
from looking at the data is that the down-range errors
(along the direction of travel) are virtually non-existent – 10

angle (degree)
approximately 0.1% of the distance travelled. Practically
0
all the error is cross-range error due to heading drift. This
results in 1-dimensional error distributions which are far -10
from the ellipsoidal point clouds normally modeled by
navigation system covariance matrices. These -20
observations led us to wonder if we could produce a
-30
usable model for predicting dead-reckoning position
errors, given a particular set of gyroscope specifications, -40
which is attempted in the next section. 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
time (sec)

ERROR ACCUMULATION MODEL Figure 10: Ensemble of drift traces from real NavChip
data
ZUPT pseudo-measurements enable correction of
position, velocity, accelerometer biases, pitch, roll, and
40
the pitch and roll gyro biases. The only important EKF
states which are not observable from zero velocity 30
measurements are yaw (heading) and the yaw gyro bias.
20
We have experimentally confirmed that operating the
NavShoe with just ZUPTs results in good short-term 10
navigation performance, but gradually loses horizontal
angle error (deg)

0
position accuracy due to heading drift. This leads to an
extremely simplistic x-y plane positioning error model -10
which should be adequate for explaining the main features
of a pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) system based on a -20

heading gyro and some accurate method of measuring -30

forward step length:
• Assume all the position error is due to heading -40

drift -50
• Assume gyro bias random walk and angle 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
time(seconds)
random walk, and therefore accumulated heading
error, are functions of time (not distance) Figure 11: Ensemble of drift traces from simulated
• At each step, accumulate a small additional NavChip data
cross-track error proportional to the length of the
step and current heading error. The simulation takes as input a list of foot positions, one
position point per step, which represent the “truth” path.
A very simple Monte Carlo simulation was written to For each step, it calculates the true step vector, and then it
propagate position traces with random errors according to updates 300 Monte Carlo particles as follows:
these assumptions. The only subtlety was to come up with 1) For each particle, update its heading error by
a gyro simulation model to generate an appropriate propagating the gyro drift model forward by the
heading error at each step. We took an ad hoc approach time interval corresponding to one step
to this, based on the RMS Gyro Drift plot described above (nominally 1 s).
(Figure 5). Figure 10 below shows an ensemble of 1-hour 2) For each particle, update its position by adding
gyro drift traces extracted from a long static dataset as to the previous position a perturbed step vector
previously described. We then hand-tuned a second-order which is calculated by rotating the true step
Gauss-Markov model until it generated a qualitatively- vector around the z axis by the current gyro
similar ensemble of drift traces (Figure 11). This is by no heading error.
means a precise or scientific approach to gyro modeling,
 3) For each particle, calculate its horizontal position
error (distance from the truth position), and plot
the median horizontal error amongst the 300
particles.
Figure 12 shows simulation results for four different
paths. In each case, the figure on the left shows the X-Y
plot of the path, with the truth points in red, and a cloud
of 300 blue Monte Carlo perturbed position dots
surrounding each red dot. The figure on the right shows
the median error at each step, plotted against the total
distance walked up to that point. Different combinations
of step length and step time were tried and it was verified
that the step length does not matter as long as the net
walking speed is the same. For example, travelling 150 m
at a walking speed of 1.5 m/s produces the same results
whether accomplished using 100 steps of length 1.5 m at
one second per step, or using 150 steps of length 1 m at
0.67 seconds per step. This makes sense given the
assumption that the error accumulated on each step is the
product of the length of that step and current heading
error, making the cumulative position error (for a straight
path and small heading error) proportional to the product
of cumulative distance and time, or distance-squared over
speed. Figure 12 a) confirms this hypothesis of error
growth roughly proportional to distance squared for a
straight segment. All simulations were implemented using
a 1.2 m/s walking speed.
Figure 12 b) shows another 200 m walk, but with a 180o
about face in the middle. The direction reversal
dramatically changes the error accumulation, and error
actually starts decreasing for a while. This can be
explained because the heading error shortly after the
reversal is highly correlated with the heading error before
the reversal, and a clockwise heading error before the
reversal will contribute errors in the +Y direction, but
after the reversal it will contribute errors in the –Y
direction that tend to cancel previous errors. Gradually the
correlation fades out and the errors start to build up again.
Due to the reversal of error accumulation, the total error
at the end of 200 m is far lower (0.32 m instead of 0.59
m) than for a straight line. Clearly, errors are not simply
proportional to the total distance travelled as one might
surmise from reading product specification sheets!
Figure 12 c) shows a 200 m square loop repeated four
times. The error grows roughly linearly over the long
term, accumulating approximately 0.3 m per lap around
the 200 m track. The fact that the error accumulates
linearly rather than quadratically over repetitions of a
closed path stems from the observation, looking at the
paths in Figure 12 and Figure 13, that the general
tendency is for the trajectory to gradually rotate about its
center-of-mass, what we might call a “Spirograph effect”.
Since the RMS heading error grows almost linearly in
time, the overall “twist” of the path does too, and with it
the peak errors, which occur at the extremities of the path
furthest from the center of mass and are spread mainly in
the tangential direction.
Based on the results of Figure 12 a), one would predict
that doubling the size of a closed loop path would
quadruple the error accumulation per loop, since each
straight side accumulates error quadratically. To confirm
this, we simulated another square of 100 m side length,
and indeed the error per loop was about 4 times larger.
Noticing that the error over a rectangular loop of a given
perimeter is fairly comparable for any aspect ratio, from
the square in track c) to the infinitely thin “rectangle” of
track b) we wondered if the error per loop is quadratically
related to the loop length regardless of loop shape.
However Figure 12 d) shows a path of length 272 m
which has less error than the three previous paths of
length 200 m. Although the trajectory is longer, the path
keeps looping in and out, so it doesn’t get as far away
from the center-of-mass, and the extremities are where the
rotation errors are amplified by larger lever arms. Due to
this very complicated dependence on path we cannot
come up with any precise formula for specifying
accuracy, but a useful rule of thumb is that the trend of
the peak errors (which always occur at the outer extrema
of the path) is proportional to the product of time and
diameter of the bounding circle around the whole path.
Applied to a building search application, we might state
the peak median errors of the NavChip as modeled here to
be “ 0.14% of the path bounding diameter per minute”.
This formula fits fairly well all the data in Figure 12. As
further confirmation, an additional simulation is shown in
Figure 13 for another longer path around our office
recorded with the NavShoe. We simulate walking around
the path three times over the course of 12.5 minutes.
According to the rule above, using a 60 m bounding
diameter we would expect the error to reach 1.05 m after
12.5 minutes, as shown by the added black line in Figure
14. As can be seen, the rule does a reasonable job of
predicting the median accuracy over time. Once we
integrate aiding sources to arrest the long term growth of
heading error, this time dependency should be reduced or
eliminated.
The keen observer will notice that the complex path used
as input to the simulation in Figure 12 d) is actually
computed output from a real trial run, and that the loop
closing error is larger than the simulation predicts.
Clearly, the simulation based only on the gyro model we
generated from analysis of static data is too optimistic.
There are probably other error sources which occur when
the NavChip is operating in the dynamic environment on
the foot, which we have yet to identify and compensate.
To the extent that some of these errors cannot be reliably
compensated, we will have to add them to the gyro error
model that drives the navigation error simulation.
 Median Horizontal Error
a) 0.7

0.6

0.5

median error (meters)

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
distance travelled (meters)

b) Median Horizontal Error

0.35

0.3

0.25

median error (meters)

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
distance travelled (meters)

c) Median Horizontal Error

50 1.4

45
1.2
40

35 1
median error (meters)

30
x (meters)

0.8
25

20 0.6
15
0.4
10

5
0.2
0
0
-10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
y (meters) distance travelled (meters)

Median Horizontal Error

0.25
d) 30

25
0.2

20
median error (meters)

0.15
x (meters)

15

10
0.1

0.05
0

-5
0
-40 -35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
y (meters) distance travelled (meters)

Figure 12: Monte Carlo simulation for different paths: a) straight 200m, b) forward/back 200 m roundtrip, c) 4 laps
around 200 m perimeter square, c) 272 m building search pattern
 increase translates into a comparable improvement in
25 accuracy for raw unaided navigation. The accuracy is still
20
not sufficient to be used for long missions without any
form of aiding or drift correction, but we believe that its
15
performance will make selection of aiding techniques and
10
start
implementation of robust aiding algorithms considerably
5 easier.
x (meters)

0
Some simulations were conducted to try to gain some
-5
insight into the qualitative characteristics of error
-10 accumulation in an unaided inertial dead-reckoning
-15 system, which might help a system designer understand
-20
what kind of aiding is needed at what temporal or spatial
intervals. Further work is needed to make the simulation
-25
model quantitatively accurate, as it currently predicts
-60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0
y (meters) much lower errors than the experimental results
demonstrated. However, it does provide a guideline on
Figure 13: A larger 300 m office loop (red dots) with
what we can hope to achieve with the NavChip in un-
simulated errors (blue dots) over 3 laps
aided configuration, which will guide us in future work as
we try to improve the sensor compensation, strapdown
Median Horizontal Error
1.4 inertial algorithms and ZUPTing implementation to come
as close as possible to that goal.
1.2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 0.14% of bounding diameter per minute
Portions of this research were supported by the DARPA
median error (meters)

0.8 MINT (Miniature Inertial Navigation Technology)

program, BAA07-53, and a grant from the Israel-U.S.
0.6 Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD)
Foundation.
0.4
REFERENCES
0.2
1. E. Foxlin, “Pedestrian tracking with shoe-mounted
0 inertial sensors.” IEEE Computer Graphics and
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
distance travelled (meters) Applications, November/December 2005 (vol 25, no.
6) pp. 38-46.
Figure 14: Error accumulation over three laps and 2. J. Elwell, “Personal inertial navigator,” Charles Stark
12.5 minutes, compared to rule of thumb prediction Draper Laboratory, Inc., Tech. Rep., 1994, (Cited in
Elwell 1999).
3. Elwell, J. (1999). Inertial navigation for the urban
CONCLUSION warrior. SPIE Conference on Digitization of the
Battlespace IV, SPIE vol. 3709, Orlando, FL
We have introduced a new MEMS inertial measurement 4. L. Sher, (1996) “Personal Inertial Navigation System
unit called the NavChip which possesses a very unusual (PINS)” un-published project for DARPA.
ratio of performance to size, weight and power. (http://www.dist-systems.bbn.com/projects/PINS/)
Compared to most low-cost miniature IMUs having
typical performance on the order of about 60o/hr bias 5. IEEE Std. 1554-2005 Recommended Practice for
stability and 2-5°/√hr angle random walk, the NavChip Inertial Sensor Test Equipment, Instrumentation,
has about a 6-fold performance advantage as well as a 6- Data Acquisition, and Analysis
fold size advantage. This combination makes it
particularly attractive as a key component in a GPS-
denied personal navigation system using foot-mounted
inertial sensors.

Preliminary experiments with the NavShoe system

operating using the NavChip IMU to replace the previous
IC3 device have shown that the IMU performance