Dev.to
7/19/2026

Teaching a phone to disbelieve its own GPS
Short summary
A mileage-tracking team improved GPS trip accuracy from 50% to 95% by treating GPS as an unreliable witness rather than ground truth. They added physics-based impossibility checks to reject absurd readings, dead reckoning via IMU to bridge tunnel dropouts, and confidence-weighted sensor fusion (Kalman-style) so clean fixes dominate jittery ones. The core lesson: stop believing whoever spoke last and weigh every input by how trustworthy it is right now.
- •Physics-based speed checks eliminate impossible GPS jumps like 400 kmph at a red light
- •Dead reckoning with accelerometer data bridges tunnel and parking garage GPS gaps
- •Confidence-weighted sensor fusion (Kalman filter mindset) replaced naive last-reading trust, boosting accuracy to 95%
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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