Mass Flow Meter and Vehicle Information DR Land Vehicles Navigation System in Indoor Environment

Land vehicle navigation has many challenges in some operating environment such as urban canyons and indoor environments (underground parking, and tunnels) where GNSS signals are suffering from multipath or blockage. A Dead Reckoning (DR) land vehicle navigation system is proposed for indoor environments based on a non-conventional navigation sensor which is multiple mass flow meters and the vehicle forward velocity obtained from On-Board Diagnostics II (OBD-II). Two mass flow sensors are placed on the front bumper in a lateral direction of the land vehicle motion direction to estimate the vehicle's heading change in indoor scenarios. A relation between a reference change of heading along with the mass flow sensors data and the land vehicle odometer is estimated through a regression model. Experimental tests have been implemented in underground parking using two mass flow meters of model (SFM3000) and a commercial OBD-II. The results show that the proposed DR system provides a promising navigation solution with an accuracy of 1.58% of the traveled distance for 130 seconds of motion of 443 meters. The proposed DR system opens a new research opportunity using a nontypical sensor that is used for medical applications to be implemented in low-cost land vehicle navigation systems especially with the mass production for such sensors.