WiFi-SLAM Using Gaussian Process Latent Variable Models

Brian Ferris, Dieter Fox, Neil Lawrence

WiFi localization, the task of determining the physical location of a mobile device from wireless signal strengths, has been shown to be an accurate method of indoor and outdoor localization and a powerful building block for location-aware applications. However, most localization techniques require a training set of signal strength readings labeled against a ground truth location map, which is prohibitive to collect and maintain as maps grow large. In this paper we propose a novel technique for solving the WiFi SLAM problem using the Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model (GP-LVM) to determine the latent-space locations of unlabeled signal strength data. We show how GP-LVM, in combination with an appropriate motion dynamics model, can be used to reconstruct a topological connectivity graph from a signal strength sequence which, in combination with the learned Gaussian Process signal strength model, can be used to perform efficient localization.

URL: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/bdferris/papers/2007-ijcai-wifi-slam.pdf