Bridging the Indoor-Outdoor Gap: Cross-Technology Ranging for Seamless Robot Navigation

TL;DR

This paper introduces the HYMN dataset, synchronizing multiple ranging technologies to analyze the indoor-outdoor transition for robot navigation, highlighting their complementary strengths and weaknesses.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of combined GNSS, UWB, WiFi FTM, and BLE measurements at indoor-outdoor boundaries, with a publicly available dataset.

Findings

Indoor-outdoor transition is where GNSS and terrestrial ranging degrade simultaneously.

The technologies are complementary, offering potential for seamless navigation.

The HYMN dataset enables further research on multi-technology positioning.

Abstract

Mobile robots that move between outdoor and indoor environments still struggle with consistent positioning. Satellite-based and terrestrial ranging each work well in their home domains, but combining them at the raw measurement level has received little attention, and the building boundary is precisely where both classes degrade. This paper reports preliminary observations from the HYMN dataset, which time-synchronizes raw measurements from GNSS, Ultra-Wideband (UWB), WiFi Fine Time Measurement (FTM), and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) against millimeter-level ground truth in an industrial setting. Per-zone measurement availability and ranging-residual behavior are characterised. The two technology classes turn out to be complementary, and the indoor-outdoor transition is where their weaknesses overlap. The dataset is publicly available.