Multi-Slot BLE Raw Database for Accurate Positioning in Mixed Indoor/Outdoor Environments

The technologies and sensors embedded in smartphones have contributed to the spread of disruptive applications built on top of Location Based Services (LBSs). Among them, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has been widely adopted for proximity and localization, as it is a simple but efficient positioning technology. This article presents a database of received signal strength measurements (RSSIs) on BLE signals in a real positioning system. The system was deployed on two buildings belonging to the campus of the University of Extremadura in Badajoz. the database is divided into three different deployments, changing in each of them the number of measurement points and the configuration of the BLE beacons. the beacons used in this work can broadcast up to six emission slots simultaneously. Fingerprinting positioning experiments are presented in this work using multiple slots, improving positioning accuracy when compared with the traditional single slot approach

A Review of Hybrid Indoor Positioning Systems Employing WLAN Fingerprinting and Image Processing

Location-based services (LBS) are a significant permissive technology. One of the main components in indoor LBS is the indoor positioning system (IPS). IPS utilizes many existing technologies such as radio frequency, images, acoustic signals, as well as magnetic sensors, thermal sensors, optical sensors, and other sensors that are usually installed in a mobile device. The radio frequency technologies used in IPS are WLAN, Bluetooth, Zig Bee, RFID, frequency modulation, and ultra-wideband. This paper explores studies that have combined WLAN fingerprinting and image processing to build an IPS. The studies on combined WLAN fingerprinting and image processing techniques are divided based on the methods used. The first part explains the studies that have used WLAN fingerprinting to support image positioning. The second part examines works that have used image processing to support WLAN fingerprinting positioning. Then, image processing and WLAN fingerprinting are used in combination to build IPS in the third part. A new concept is proposed at the end for the future development of indoor positioning models based on WLAN fingerprinting and supported by image processing to solve the effect of people presence around users and the user orientation problem

Layered Path Planning with Human Motion Detection for Autonomous Robots

Reactively planning a path in a dynamic and unstructured environment is a key challenge for mobile robots and autonomous systems. Planning should consider factors including the long-term and short-term prediction, current environmental situation, and human context. In this chapter, we present a novel robotic path-planning method with human activity information in a large-scale three-dimensional (3D) environment. In the learning stage, this method uses human motion detection results and preliminary environmental information to build a long-term context model with a hidden Markov model (HMM) to describe and predict human activities in the environment. In the application stage, when a robot detects humans in the environment, it first uses the long-term context model to generate impedance areas in the environment. Then, the robot searches each area of the environment to find paths between key locations, such as escalators, to generate a Reactive Key Cost Map (RKCM), whose vertexes are those key locations and edges are generated paths. The graphs of all areas are connected using the key nodes in the subgraphs to build a global graph of the whole environment. Finally, the robot can reactively plan a path based on the current environmental situation and predicted human activities. This method enables robots to navigate robustly in a large-scale 3D environment with regular human activities, and it significantly reduces computing workload with proposed RKCM

Indoor Localization for Personalized Ambient Assisted Living of Multiple Users in Multi-Floor Smart Environments

This paper presents a multifunctional interdisciplinary framework that makes four scientific contributions towards the development of personalized ambient assisted living, with a specific focus to address the different and dynamic needs of the diverse aging population in the future of smart living environments. First, it presents a probabilistic reasoning-based mathematical approach to model all possible forms of user interactions for any activity arising from the user diversity of multiple users in such environments. Second, it presents a system that uses this approach with a machine learning method to model individual user profiles and user-specific user interactions for detecting the dynamic indoor location of each specific user. Third, to address the need to develop highly accurate indoor localization systems for increased trust, reliance, and seamless user acceptance, the framework introduces a novel methodology where two boosting approaches Gradient Boosting and the AdaBoost algorithm are integrated and used on a decision tree-based learning model to perform indoor localization. Fourth, the framework introduces two novel functionalities to provide semantic context to indoor localization in terms of detecting each user's floor-specific location as well as tracking whether a specific user was located inside or outside a given spatial region in a multi-floor-based indoor setting. These novel functionalities of the proposed framework were tested on a dataset of localization-related Big Data collected from 18 different users who navigated in 3 buildings consisting of 5 floors and 254 indoor spatial regions. The results show that this approach of indoor localization for personalized AAL that models each specific user always achieves higher accuracy as compared to the traditional approach of modeling an average user

Hapi: A Robust Pseudo-3D Calibration-Free WiFi-based Indoor Localization System

In this paper, we present Hapi, a novel system that uses off-the-shelf standard WiFi to provide pseudo-3D indoor localization. It estimates the user's floor and her 2D location on that floor. Hapi is calibration-free, only requiring the building's floorplans and its WiFi APs' installation location for deployment. Our analysis shows that while a user can hear APs from nearby floors as well as her floor, she will typically only receive signals from spatially closer APs in distant floors, as compared to APs in her floor. This is due to signal attenuation by floors/ceilings along with the 3D distance between the APs and the user. Hapi leverages this observation to achieve accurate and robust location estimates. A deep-learning based method is proposed to identify the user's floor. Then, the identified floor along with the user's visible APs from all floors are used to estimate her 2D location through a novel RSS-Rank Gaussian-based method. Additionally, we present a regression based method to predict Hapi's location estimates' quality and employ it within a Kalman Filter to further refine the accuracy. Our evaluation results, from deployment on various android devices over 6 months with 13 subjects in 5 different up to 9 floors multistory buildings, show that Hapi can identify the user's exact floor up to 95.2% of the time and her 2D location with a median accuracy of 3.5m, achieving 52.1% and 76.0% improvement over related calibration-free state-of-the-art systems respectively.Comment: Accepted for publication in MobiQuitous 2018 - the 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Service

Fingerprint Database Enhancement by Applying Interpolation and Regression Techniques for IoT-based Indoor Localization

Most applied indoor localization is based on distance and fingerprint techniques. The distance-based technique converts specific parameters to a distance, while the fingerprint technique stores parameters as the fingerprint database. The widely used Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, e.g., Wi-Fi and ZigBee, provide the localization parameters, i.e., received signal strength indicator (RSSI). The fingerprint technique advantages over the distance-based method as it straightforwardly uses the parameter and has better accuracy. However, the burden in database reconstruction in terms of complexity and cost is the disadvantage of this technique. Some solutions, i.e., interpolation, image-based method, machine learning (ML)-based, have been proposed to enhance the fingerprint methods. The limitations are complex and evaluated only in a single environment or simulation. This paper proposes applying classical interpolation and regression to create the synthetic fingerprint database using only a relatively sparse RSSI dataset. We use bilinear and polynomial interpolation and polynomial regression techniques to create the synthetic database and apply our methods to the 2D and 3D environments. We obtain an accuracy improvement of 0.2m for 2D and 0.13m for 3D by applying the synthetic database. Adding the synthetic database can tackle the sparsity issues, and the offline fingerprint database construction will be less burden. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-SP1-012 Full Text: PD

Indoor positioning model based on people effect and ray tracing propagation

WLAN-fingerprinting has been highlighted as the preferred technology in an Indoor Positioning System (IPS) due to its accurate positioning results and minimal infrastructure cost. However, the accuracy of IPS fingerprinting is highly influenced by the fluctuation in signal strength as a result of encountering obstacles. Many researchers have modelled static obstacles such as walls and ceilings, but hardly any have modelled the effect of people presence as an obstacle although the human body significantly impacts signal strength. Hence, the people presence effect must be considered to obtain highly accurate positioning results. Previous research proposed a model that only considered the direct path between the transmitter and the receiver. However, for indoor propagation, multipath effects such as reflection can also have a significant influence, but were not considered in past work. Therefore, this research proposes an accurate indoor positioning model that considers people presence using a ray tracing (AIRY) model in a dynamic environment which relies on existing infrastructure. Three solutions were proposed to construct AIRY: an automatic radio map using ray tracing (ARM-RT), a new human model in ray tracing (HUMORY), and a people effect constant for received signal strength indicator (RSSI) adaptation. At the offline stage, 30 RSSIs were recorded at each point using a smartphone to create a radio map database (523 points). The real-time RSSI was then compared to the radio map database at the online stage using MATLAB software to determine the user position (65 test points). The proposed model was tested at Level 3 of Razak Tower, UTM Kuala Lumpur (80 × 16 m). To test the influence of people presence, the number, position, and distance of the people around the mobile device (MD) were varied. The results showed that the closer the people were to the MD in both the Line of Sight (LOS) and Non-LOS position, the greater the decrease in RSSI, in which the increment number of people will increase the amount of reflection signals to be blocked. The signal strength reduction started from 0.5 dBm with two people and reached 0.9 dBm with seven people. In addition, the ray tracing model produced smaller errors on RSSI prediction than the multi-wall model when considering the effect of people presence. The k-nearest neighbour (KNN) algorithm was used to define the position. The initial accuracy was improved from 2.04 m to 0.57 m after people presence and multipath effects were considered. In conclusion, the proposed model successfully increased indoor positioning accuracy in a dynamic environment by overcoming the people presence effect

The IPIN 2019 Indoor Localisation Competition—Description and Results

IPIN 2019 Competition, sixth in a series of IPIN competitions, was held at the CNR Research Area of Pisa (IT), integrated into the program of the IPIN 2019 Conference. It included two on-site real-time Tracks and three off-site Tracks. The four Tracks presented in this paper were set in the same environment, made of two buildings close together for a total usable area of 1000 m 2 outdoors and and 6000 m 2 indoors over three floors, with a total path length exceeding 500 m. IPIN competitions, based on the EvAAL framework, have aimed at comparing the accuracy performance of personal positioning systems in fair and realistic conditions: past editions of the competition were carried in big conference settings, university campuses and a shopping mall. Positioning accuracy is computed while the person carrying the system under test walks at normal walking speed, uses lifts and goes up and down stairs or briefly stops at given points. Results presented here are a showcase of state-of-the-art systems tested side by side in real-world settings as part of the on-site real-time competition Tracks. Results for off-site Tracks allow a detailed and reproducible comparison of the most recent positioning and tracking algorithms in the same environment as the on-site Tracks

Recent Advances in Indoor Localization Systems and Technologies

Despite the enormous technical progress seen in the past few years, the maturity of indoor localization technologies has not yet reached the level of GNSS solutions. The 23 selected papers in this book present the recent advances and new developments in indoor localization systems and technologies, propose novel or improved methods with increased performance, provide insight into various aspects of quality control, and also introduce some unorthodox positioning methods