A Continuous Positioning Algorithm Based on RTK and VI-SLAM With Smartphones

The navigation technology has developed rapidly and immensely over the past few decades. Among the multiple navigation technologies, the representative and promising techniques are Real-time Kinematic (RTK) technique and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). RTK can provide real-time positioning results with high accuracy, while SLAM can not only locate the user but also construct a map of the new ambient. The first smartphone, the Xiaomi MI 8, equipped with the dual-frequency Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), hit the market in May 2018, providing valid carrier-phase measurements for RTK owe to the developer option of "Force full GNSS measurements." Nevertheless, RTK underperforms in urban areas as the buildings and trees can block the satellite signals. RTK cannot even provide positioning results when the GNSS outage happens. However, SLAM can effectively make up the drawbacks of RTK as it utilizes no more information than the images. SLAM can also be combined with the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) called Visual-Inertial SLAM (VI-SLAM,) with the improvement of accuracy and robustness. Therefore, our study mainly aims to confirm the feasibility of continuous positioning based on RTK and VI-SLAM with the Xiaomi MI 8. An application is developed to execute the functions, including logging images, measurements of IMU, and GPS measurements in Receiver INdependent EXchange (RINEX) format with the Xiaomi MI 8. The performances of RTK with and without the assistance of VI-SLAM are assessed respectively in the urban area. The experimental results demonstrate that the combination of RTK and VI-SLAM based on smartphones can effectively provide continuous positioning results. We believe our application will facilitate research and development in relation to positioning algorithms. Readers have access to this application at https://github.com/Nronaldo/CIGRLogger.