BLE Beacons for Indoor Positioning at an Interactive IoT-Based Smart Museum

The Internet of Things (IoT) can enable smart infrastructures to provide advanced services to the users. New technological advancement can improve our everyday life, even simple tasks as a visit to the museum. In this paper, an indoor localization system is presented, to enhance the user experience in a museum. In particular, the proposed system relies on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons proximity and localization capabilities to automatically provide the users with cultural contents related to the observed artworks. At the same time, an RSS-based technique is used to estimate the location of the visitor in the museum. An Android application is developed to estimate the distance from the exhibits and collect useful analytics regarding each visit and provide a recommendation to the users. Moreover, the application implements a simple Kalman filter in the smartphone, without the need of the Cloud, to improve localization precision and accuracy. Experimental results on distance estimation, location, and detection accuracy show that BLE beacon is a promising solution for an interactive smart museum. The proposed system has been designed to be easily extensible to the IoT technologies and its effectiveness has been evaluated through experimentation

Indoor positioning system using BLE beacon to improve knowledge about museum visitors

Generally, a museum has many locations and artifacts collection that display for visitors. Museum manager often have difficulty in obtaining information on visitors behavior such as, is there are particular locations/artifacts in the museum that are frequently/rarely visit by museum visitors, how long visitors spend their time in particular locations/artifacts, etc. The purpose of this study is try to build a suitable system in order to improve knowledge about the behavior of museum visitors by identifying the position of visitors in the museum. This study uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacon that place around the museum. The visitor mobile phone will detect BLE beacon signal, then the mobile phone application will calculated the visitor’s mobile phone position using the signal strength from the BLE beacons that are detected. The application then sends it to the computer server to display it in as museum visitor heat map. From this information, the museum manager could find out the visitors behavior movement and know which areas/artifacts that frequently/rarely visit by museum visitors. According to distance error testing which compare real location and position of the calculation, it is show that the average of distance error is around 140 cm. So, it can be concluded that the information obtained is sufficient enough to represent the position of museum visitors

Architecture for museums location-based content delivery using augmented reality and beacons

The digital transformation applied to museum's context is somehow usual nowadays, presenting many benefits to the visitors. However, most of the applications provide static and basic information that is not appealing nor promotes the involvement of the visitor in the tour. This paper proposes an architecture of a location-based content delivery inside a museum, based on a dynamic approach that promotes the visitor to immerse in the tour's story. The solution was created as a response to a real case study for the Foz C?a museum in Portugal. The proposed solution uses beacons, for the indoor location of visitors, and augmented reality for providing contents based on what the user is seeing, following a narrative that captures his attention at all times and providing artifact's details that the naked eye can not see. A comparative study was made to determine the properties and compare two augmented reality tools: Immersal AR and EasyAR. The precision of beacons detection, under different conditions and configurations, was also presented as preliminary results of this work.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

An intelligent system for interactive visits in smart places

In this work, we designed and developed a prototype as an integrated system to provide visitors or users of complex buildings, such as museums, hospitals, shopping malls, amongst others, relevant information in an interactive and comfortable way while keeping it simple and affordable for the building managers. To achieve this, a mobile application was developed that allows its users to access information from several Smart Places, in a single mobile application. This application has a generic and common interface to be used by different types of Smart Places and provides multi-language information, to the end-users, that can be defined and translated by each Smart Place. To make this possible, the prototype architecture was designed providing the Smart Places independence since they have their own database and can manage their information. Furthermore, the system uses an Indoor Location and Tracking System taking advantage of BLE devices and Bluetooth capabilities of mobile devices to provide the relevant and interactive information based on the end-user location within the Smart Place. This prototype is also composed of an open-source Content Management System (based on Drupal 8), that allows the system operators to upload and manage the information provided to the end-users. Since the design and construction of most modern buildings go through a BIM process, our Content Management System provides a way to upload information extracted from BIM tools through CSV files. The resulting system is affordable for Smart Places while being comfortable and interactive for the users.Neste trabalho, foi desenhado e desenvolvido um protótipo sendo um sistema integrado de forma a proporcionar aos visitantes ou utilizadores de edifícios complexos, tais como museus, hospitais, centros comerciais, entre outros, informação relevante de forma interactive e confortável, mantendo-o simples e acessível para os gestores de edifícios. Para tal, foi desenvolvida uma aplicação móvel que permite aos seus utilizadores aceder à informação de vários Smart Places, numa única aplicação. Esta tem uma interface genérica e comum para ser utilizada por diferentes tipos de Smart Places e disponibiliza informação multilingue, aos utilizadores, podendo ser definida e traduzida por cada Smart Place. Para que isto seja possível, a arquitetura do protótipo foi desenhada de forma a garantir a independência dos Smart Places, uma vez que estes têm a sua própria base de dados e podem gerir a sua informação. Além disso, o sistema utiliza um Indoor Location and Tracking System, aproveitando os dispositivos BLE e os recursos Bluetooth dos dispositivos móveis, para fornecer as informações relevantes e interativas baseadas na localização do utilizador dentro do Smart Place. Este protótipo também é composto por um Content Management System de código aberto (baseado no Drupal 8), que permite aos operadores do sistema carregar e gerir as informações fornecidas aos utilizadores finais. Como o planeamento e construção dos edifícios mais modernos passam por um processo de BIM, o Content Management System permite carregar informações extraídas de ferramentas BIM através de ficheiros CSV. O sistema resultante é acessível para Smart Places mantendo-se confortável e interativo para os utilizadores

iBeacon-based indoor positioning system: from theory to practical deployment

Developing an indoor positioning system became essential when global positioning system signals could not work well in indoor environments. Mobile positioning can be accomplished via many radio frequency technology such as Bluetooth low energy (BLE), wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), ultra-wideband (UWB), and so on. With the pressing need for indoor positioning systems, we, in this work, present a deployment scheme for smartphone using Bluetooth iBeacons. Three main parts, hardware deployment, software deployment, and positioning accuracy assessment, are discussed carefully to find the optimal solution for a complete indoor positioning system. Our application and experimental results show that proposed solution is feasible and indoor positioning system is completely attainable

An interactive visiting system using BLE devices

This chapter presents a use case based on the development of an interactive, integrated and adaptable visiting system for complex buildings and surrounding grounds (smart places). The system features a mobile application that allows the user to access information from several smart places in a single application, and an Indoor Location and Tracking System that infers the user location during the smart place visit. The system calculates the tracking and location of the user based on the positioning of neighbouring BLE devices sensed via Bluetooth on the user’s mobile device. The approximate location, behaviour and interests, and hence the visiting profile of each user, can be inferred by the signals from multiple beacons installed on the building at specific pre-defined positions. The system also integrates a backend content management system to allow the creation and management of smart places information and supports information import from BIM tools.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Combining IoT and users’ profiles to provide contextualized information and services

Technological evolution has led to the emergence of a set of solutions suitable to support mobility and ubiquity scenarios. Wireless computing and mobile devices together with the miniaturization of sensors and actuators, which are now embedded in physical spaces, are today’s reality. This phenomenon opened the door to a set of opportunities for reengineering how we perceive a given fact or situation and how we act on it. With regard to the delivery of information to users of a given physical space, there is now the possibility of radically transforming the mechanisms of interaction between the space and the user, redesigning the entire experience of interaction. This change allows the user to see the physical space around him adapt to himself and provide him with contextualized and personalized information according to his profile of interest. This approach can improve the way we manage customer relationships in a given business context. This article presents an overview of the state of the art of intelligent spaces and analyzes the potential of indoor positioning systems and techniques, and proposes a conceptual model for the detection of users in physical spaces and the consequent adaptation of an intelligent physical space to provide information aligned with the user's interest profile and in accordance with their privacy rules.UNIAG, R&D unit funded by the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. UID/GES/4752/2019.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio