Finnish researchers experiment with shopping center navigation via smartphones

Finnish researchers from Aalto University in Espoo and the company IndoorAtlas have developed a model to track the position of a telephone in buildings by combining data from various sensors.

The researchers used the gyroscope and accelerometer to track movement, while the barometer measures elevation, they write in a paper. To keep up with the movement, they tried various situations. For example, the phone was in a jacket pocket, in the hand and in another experiment in a buggy with a baby in it.

The experiments took place with two Apple devices: an iPhone 6 and an iPad Pro with 12.9″ screen. The data from the gyroscope and accelerometer could read the researchers 100 times per second, with the barometer this happened once every 1, 3 seconds.

The intention of the model is to find a method for indoor navigation that works on almost all smartphones, without having a major influence on the battery life. Other methods of navigation within buildings, for example, work with camera images, which demands more from the battery. There are other methods, which work with Bluetooth beacons or WiFi signals, for example, but the localization is not done on the phone, but on other devices. Satellite navigation systems such as GPS and Galileo do not work indoors, because the receiver must have a direct view of the satellites.