Survey of indoor navigation solutions

In the last decade, there is an increasing demand for indoor positioning and navigation. These systems are beneficial in different areas of life, helping the people to find their way in the shopping mall, in the hospital or in any other building. As technology is continuously improving, new indoor systems are appearing bringing less costs and better performance, while other ones are becoming deprecated. This survey is an evaluation of the recent systems, taking their benefits and drawbacks into consideration and analysing the future tendencies

An indoor positioning system using Bluetooth Low Energy

In this paper, we present a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based indoor positioning system developed for monitoring the daily living pattern of old people (e.g. people living with dementia) or individuals with disabilities. The proposed sensing system is composed of multiple sensors that are installed in different locations in a home environment. The specific location of the user in the building has been pre-recorded into the proposed sensing system that captures the raw Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) from the BLE beacon that is attached on the user. Two methods are proposed to determine the indoor location and the tracking of the users: a trilateration-based method and fingerprinting-based method. Experiments have been carried out in different home environments to verify the proposed system and methods. The results show that our system is able to accurately track the user location in home environments and can track the living patterns of the user which, in turn, may be used to infer the health status of the user. Our results also show that the positions of the BLE beacons on the user and different quality of BLE beacons do not affect the tracking accuracy

Implementación Android de algoritmos basados en información heurística y técnicas Map Matching para la calibración de balizas US

Este Trabajo Fin de Máster desarrolla e implementa sobre una plataforma Android un algoritmo para la calibración tanto de motas ultrasónicas individuales como de balizas ultrasónicas LOCATE-US, modelo diseñado en el grupo GEINTRA y que consta de 5 transductores ultrasónicos. La herramienta permite calibrar la posición de balizas situadas tanto en el techo como en las paredes y aunque se ha desarrollado pensando en su uso con tecnología ultrasónica, puede utilizarse con otro tipo de balizas como radiofrecuencia, infrarrojos, etc. El fundamento de la calibración es la estimación de la posición de la baliza con respecto a la posición de referencia del sistema. La calibración propuesta consiste en el uso de las distancias de la baliza de estudio a las paredes cercanas medidas mediante un medidor laser. La información de dichas distancias, el mapa en formato vectorial y otros datos heurísticos (como la región de ubicación aproximada de la baliza, la orientación aproximada de las medidas y las características de las paredes de las cuales se han obtenido la distancia de la baliza a ellas) son las entradas del algoritmo propuesto que obtiene la mejor estimación de la posición de la baliza. Dado que no hay una solución cerrada al problema, se ha implementado una minimización numérica basada en el uso de algoritmos genéticos (GA) y de búsqueda armónica (HS). La propuesta se ha validado con simulaciones y experimentos reales, obteniendo correctamente la posición de las balizas incluso en entornos complejos, con paredes que presentan un cierto grado de curvatura.This study presents an algorithm developed on an Android-based platform for calibrating the position of beacons which are placed both on the ceiling and on the wall of an indoor environment. Specifically, the beacon structure to be calibrated was developed in the GEINTRA group and called LOCATE-US. It consists of five ultrasonic transducers distributed around a square structure of 70.7x70.7cm. The application also allows to calibrate individual ultrasonic spots. The notion of calibration is to estimate the position of a beacon related to a known reference system of a map. The calibration proposal consists of using several distances from the beacon to the neighbor walls measured by a laser meter. The information of these distances, the map in vector format and other heuristic data (such as the approximate localization region of the position of the beacon, the approximate orientation of the measurements and the features of the walls from which the laser meter is projected) are the inputs of the proposed algorithm that obtains the best estimation of the beacon’s position. Due to the fact that there is not an analytical solution, we have implemented a numerical minimization based on the use of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a Harmony Search (HS) methods. The proposal has been validated with simulations and real experiments, obtaining the position of the beacon with great accuracy.Máster Universitario en Ingeniería Industrial (M141

Enhancing the museum experience with a sustainable solution based on contextual information obtained from an on-line analysis of users’ behaviour

Human computer interaction has evolved in the last years in order to enhance users’ experiences and provide more intuitive and usable systems. A major leap through in this scenario is obtained by embedding, in the physical environment, sensors capable of detecting and processing users’ context (position, pose, gaze, ...). Feeded by the so collected information flows, user interface paradigms may shift from stereotyped gestures on physical devices, to more direct and intuitive ones that reduce the semantic gap between the action and the corresponding system reaction or even anticipate the user’s needs, thus limiting the overall learning effort and increasing user satisfaction. In order to make this process effective, the context of the user (i.e. where s/he is, what is s/he doing, who s/he is, what are her/his preferences and also actual perception and needs) must be properly understood. While collecting data on some aspects can be easy, interpreting them all in a meaningful way in order to improve the overall user experience is much harder. This is more evident when we consider informal learning environments like museums, i.e. places that are designed to elicit visitor response towards the artifacts on display and the cultural themes proposed. In such a situation, in fact, the system should adapt to the attention paid by the user choosing the appropriate content for the user’s purposes, presenting an intuitive interface to navigate it. My research goal is focused on collecting, in a simple,unobtrusive, and sustainable way, contextual information about the visitors with the purpose of creating more engaging and personalized experiences