IMU-assisted monocular visual odometry including the human walking model for wearable applications

In this paper, we present a novel approach for monocular visual odometry combined with an inertial measurement unit to estimate the human walking trajectory. The scale factor is computed from the walking speed estimation derived by the kinematic model of human walking. This model not only keeps the important characteristic in biped rolling-foot model, but also makes the speed estimation feasible using human body acceleration. A wearable and calibrated IMU-Camera device is made to mount on the center of human's waist for experimental verification. With the human walking speed and gyroscope measurement, an Unscented Kalman filter is implemented to estimate the current scale factor and refine the attitude of the camera. Experiments in an indoor environment are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.