3 places Indoor Mapping will make life smoother
Do you remember the days when the only way to get to where you were going, if you hadn’t been there before or didn’t exactly remember the route, was to use paper maps? Do you remember having to wait for a map to be printed, memorizing the route, making notes and then driving whilst looking for landmarks to pinpoint your position on the map?
While it is true that GPS was available to the public as early as 1990, with the first commercial GPS phone being released in 1999, it wasn’t until 2004 that Qualcomm developed systems that allowed for live assisted GPS on mobile phones, which forever changed the way we would find out destinations. The days of getting lost are nearly all behind us, well at least outside. Indoors however, can still be confusing to navigate, especially when looking for a store in a shopping mall.
Thankfully, the revolution in mapping hasn’t ended just yet, and where GPS doesn’t work, IPS takes over.
What is IPS?
IPS stands for Indoor Positioning Systems, and is essentially GPS, but used indoors. The primary function of IPS is finding objects or people inside a building, but is being frequently used to find areas within indoor venues. You will find this being used in an advanced indoor mapping platform like Mappedin.
It works by using several sensors in mobile devices, such as the gyroscope, accelerometer, altimeter, magnetometer and Bluetooth, to calculate the position of the device in an indoor environment. IPS is currently at the stage of development and implementation that GPS was about 15 years ago, which means there is still a lot of work to be done, but many leaders in this field of technology are making it a priority, such as MappedIn.
MappedIn is a company that focuses on IPS technology, and provides users with a platform to digitize maps and create applications related to IPS. Users can either use the platform’s simple, yet powerful editor to generate a digital asset from a 2D map. The editor includes features such as height attribution, automated pathing, automated walls, polygon tracking and much more. Users are also able to take advantage of pre-built applications, or use MappedIn’s custom development resources to build their own. The company is up and coming, but has already provided services to over 600 live venues in over 25 countries.
Here are a few real-world applications that are already being used.
Shopping malls
One of the most frustrating things for many people is going to the shopping mall. Not only are there crowds of people, loud noises, eye-catching advertisements and stores tucked away that are difficult to see, but most malls are huge and a labyrinth by design. Indoor mapping for malls will help the shoppers to easily find their way around.
Over the last 5 years, IPS has been slowly integrated at various malls, such as in Dubai, to raise the level of convenience for customers. Now shoppers are able to easily find stores, restrooms and ATM’s, as well as the exits. IPS is also being used to actually help customers find specific products, and where to find your car.
Offices
As we move further into a world run by technology, businesses are usually the first to take advantage of technological advancements in order to continue making profits. This is true even for office buildings, and IPS can make navigating multi story office skyscrapers a walk in the park, especially for visitors who aren’t familiar with the structure at all.
IPS can also help with optimizing the workflow of employees by providing data on worker movements to see where the most time is being spent traveling from one department to another, which then allows for replanning and reorganizing office spaces and layouts.
Museums
If you have visited a museum recently, you might have thought that the technology is almost as old as some of the exhibits. This is where IPS can make a world of difference. IPS can provide guests with information that will allow them to find exactly what it is that interests them, as well as giving extra information along the way.
This can be done by programming some of the systems with the ability to detect when a user has entered a certain area, and then prompting a command to change the audio track they’re listening to, or information they’re reading.