Reliable indoor navigation remains a challenge for a mobile industry increasingly focused on location-based services. Several would-be standards are in the works, including one from Nokia, and another Finnish project has emerged, which is harnessing the Earth’s magnetic field.
In a paper spotted by CNet.com, a group of researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland describes an indoor positioning system (IPS) which uses the ambient magnetic field in the same way that homing pigeons or lobsters do to navigate. The group has now spun out its project into a company called IndoorAtlas.
“Modern buildings with reinforced concrete and steel structures have unique, spatially varying ambient magnetic fields that can be used for positioning, in much the same way … as animals use the Earth’s magnetic field,” the authors say. “Each building, floor and corridor creates a distinct magnetic field disturbance that can be measured to identify a location and generate a map.’
The technology would be built into a device as a compass is now, and would require no external infrastructure. It is accurate to .10 centimeters, said IndoorAtlas, which has already released a smartphone API (application programming interface) with indoor mapping tools, software licences, and a cloud-based mapping service.
Late last year, Nokia unveiled technology from its Silicon Valley research unit, which it hopes to make the basis of an industry standard for indoor navigation, using a new extension of Bluetooth. “We want to take what’s been done in navigation outdoors and bring it inside,” said principal radio systems researcher Fabio Belloni at the time.
Nokia, which has put location services and its Navteq unit at the heart of its recovery plan, is leading industry work on a location extension protocol to ride on top of Bluetooth 4.0, which could be formalized as a standard later this year. This would blanket a room with Bluetooth coverage using antenna arrays and the Low Energy strand of the short range standard. These arrays then track all kinds of devices sporting Bluetooth tags and the system uses triangulation techniques to harness that data to create 3D maps of the room and its contents.
Nokia believes the first applications would be to help people find their way round large exhibition halls or shopping malls, or to enable retailers to track shopper behaviour in stores using tagged carts.