Indoor Positioning System

[Martyn]

Hi All,

I am not super happy with the inaccurate information about the position of indoor locations (e.g. stores in a shopping mall). The problem is that GPS Navigation does not work inside of buildings.

There are some alternative systems available, which are using the sensors of the cell phone (compass, altimeter, gyroscope) and in addition the strength of the wifi.

Many of us are walking through shopping malls while contributing as Google guides. I would like to have a channel to contribute this indoor information from my cell phone and from wifi in order to get better indoor maps in (near) future.

What is your opinion about that? Does Google have any plans about that?

Happy trails

Martin

Comparison of GPS Signals

[Flash]

Google already has such a system, but it needs to be trained.  After an owner has his building indoor mapped they are encouraged to put the training app on their phone and then wander their building telling the app where they are currently located so that it can learn the values from all the other sensors at that point.

If the owner does not do so, then there is no data to improve your location.

[Martyn]

Hi Greg,

The training of an Indoor Positioning System requires swarm intelligence - so it would make sense if we are doing it.

Shopping mall Management (even the small malls) should be encouraged to provide maps/digital drawings of their properties. I am 100% sure that many of them do not know about the advantages of easy navigation inside the Building.

Martin

[Flash · Accepted solution]

The training of indoor mapping cannot simply be done by swarms.

Currently the same thing is done outdoors.  Google knows about the visibility and strengths of wifi, cell towers and other things that actually can give position data by putting sensors on their Street View cars.  But recording this data does not help unless the position of the sensors is precisely know, which is the case of the cars is accomplished via GPS.

Indoors the precise position is not known via any sensor, thus the strengths of the other signals cannot be correlated to that position.  Adding more sensors to the "swarm" is not going to make a difference; the position will remain unknown.  It requires that some use the follow up app that I previously described and provide the positions.

While you feel that owners will not be tech savvy enough to do so; we are speaking of people that were tech savvy enough to see the need for and get indoor mapping set up.  As for other owners, Google does advertise the advantages; but probably the biggest way places are going to learn about it is to see other places set up on the map.  A owner of a mall is in the business of promoting, I would not discount their abilities in recognizing ways to improve their investment.