GPS Navigation Indoors

Because GPS requires a line-of-sight connection with satellites, it cannot work in urban canyons, in caves, or inside buildings. Inertial navigation works around this problem, while delivering sub-meter accuracy and full orientation data (yaw, pitch, and roll), with several times the update rate of conventional GPS navigation.For a short distance, you can navigate with reasonable precision, but for longer trips, your sense of relative location tends to drift. But if you know something about the environment - that the room gets warmer at one corner, or that the floor is slanted - the drift is reduced. Eliminating drift, and finding new senses to take advantage of, are the biggest challenges in developing a functional inertial navigation unit.Course Zero Automation is reducing drift in their device by incorporating a unique variety of sensors and developing software to determine the reliability and usability of each. Power consumption and cost will be reduced by using commercially available sensors intended for videogame and cell phone integration. A low-cost inertial navigation device will have uses outside the consumer handheld market. Aside from multiple applications in the defense industry, first responders will be able to use the same device to identify their location within a smoke filled building, or to identify the location of a fallen comrade.