Abstract
When a user wants to know how far he is away from an object in sight, a typical method is to search the target object in a map application which relies on GPS for distance estimation. This method fails if the target is not listed in the map or GPS signals are not available, such as in a tunnel or in the wild. This paper presents CamDist, a ranging system using the camera of a smartphone. CamDist takes two photos of the target in the direction from the user to the target, and performs distance estimation based on the size difference of the target in the two photos and the moving distance of the smartphone between taking two photos. CamDist has a novel accelerometer based moving distance estimation module that adaptively rotates the smartphone’s axis and gives accurate distance estimation. The estimation method applies to other scenarios when the smartphone moves in a direction orthogonal to gravity, and is better than the built-in rotation method of the smartphone. We provide theoretical analysis on the estimation error of CamDist, and show that the working range of CamDist depends on the resolution of the camera as well as the physical size of the remote target. Also, a series of real-world experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of CamDist.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61972199), Jiangsu Hydraulic Science and Technology Project (No. 2020061) and Hydraulic Research Institute of Jiangsu Province (No. 2020z025).
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Zhu, Y., Zhu, X., Qian, C. (2021). CamDist: Camera Based Distance Estimation with a Smartphone. In: Liu, Z., Wu, F., Das, S.K. (eds) Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications. WASA 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12937. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85928-2_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85928-2_26
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