Evaluation of Sensors Measurements in Consumer-Grade Android Wearables for Robust Positioning Applications

Commercial wearable devices offer new research opportunities today, thanks to their myriad of embedded sensors. Recently, the development of Android smartwatches opened new horizons for research, with the latest WearOS versions giving access to the raw sensor measurements, including GNSS, IMU, and even health sensor measurements. In this research, we explore the differences between two Android smartphones and two smartwatches in terms of measurement quality and compare them to the research-grade wearable ULISS. The surveys have been performed in various outdoor and indoor environments, and the measurements are provided as an open-access dataset. The quality of IMU and raw GNSS measurements is analyzed, and the positioning capacities of all devices are compared. Finally, the current limits of Android wearables are assessed, and future research opportunities are highlighted.