MSCEKF-MIO: Magnetic-Inertial Odometry Based on Multi-State Constraint Extended Kalman Filter

Abstract: To overcome the limitation of existing indoor odometry technologies which often cannot simultaneously meet requirements for accuracy cost-effectiveness, and robustness-this paper proposes a novel magnetometer array-aided inertial odometry approach, MSCEKF-MIO (Multi-State Constraint Extended Kalman Filter-based Magnetic-Inertial Odometry). We construct a magnetic field model by fitting measurements from the magnetometer array and then use temporal variations in this model-extracted from continuous observations-to estimate the carrier's absolute velocity. Furthermore, we implement the MSCEKF framework to fuse observed magnetic field variations with position and attitude estimates from inertial navigation system (INS) integration, thereby enabling autonomous, high-precision indoor relative positioning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves superior velocity estimation accuracy and horizontal positioning precision relative to state-of-the-art magnetic array-aided INS algorithms (MAINS). On datasets with trajectory lengths of 150-250m, the proposed method yields an average horizontal position RMSE of approximately 2.5m. In areas with distinctive magnetic features, the magneto-inertial odometry achieves a velocity estimation accuracy of 0.07m/s. Consequently, the proposed method offers a novel positioning solution characterized by low power consumption, cost-effectiveness, and high reliability in complex indoor environments.