Vision-track: vision based indoor tracking in anchor-free regions

Smart-devices can render high quality location services when endowed with the ability to analyze information conveyed through video feed. In this paper, we aim to provide tracking services by using a mobile smart camera such as in google glasses and smartphones considering the following three objectives: (1) No additional deployment, (2) No user-side instrumentation or hardware upgrades, and (3) Easy adoption in practice. Existing RF or VLC based solutions for indoor tracking can provide location and orientation only when there are dense deployments of APs or VLC bulbs (anchor points) in user's field of view. Vision-Track is the first vision based solution that can track the camera's location and orientation indoors even when no anchor point is in line-of-sight (LOS). Vision-Track deployed in an indoor college building provides a median localization accuracy of 49 cm.