Indoor Navigation And PersonalTracking System Using BluetoothLow Energy Beacons

Navigation systems for outdoor purposes have been around us for several years.Recently, it has emerged for indoor use. Thanks to techniques as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, public places like shopping malls have come up with solutions that help theirvisitors navigate through the area. At the same time, an approach called crowd-sourced localization has hit the market. It is a technique where people help eachother to track down lost assets by getting close enough to an attached device andregister its coordinates. In this thesis, these two techniques were combined to build and evaluate anapplication which handles the indoor positioning system with a new approach. Theexpensive part of the system is already included in the users and visitorssmartphones. The program consists of positioning the user, while activelysearching the near area for lost objects. This means that the only cost for the clientis to pay for the relatively cheap beacons attached to the walls and ceiling, whichare used to locate the users in the building. Tests were done to evaluate how accurate the algorithm was when deciding theposition of the lost object. The practical number of smartphones required to findthe lost asset were also evaluated. Beside these technical aspects a user centeredsurvey was done to understand if people are willing to use such a system. The results showed inconsistency in term of accuracy, but it also showed that itwas sufficient for finding the lost asset by this approach. By looking at the resultsfrom the different tests that were made a conclusion can be drawn that it requiresapproximately one user per every 360 to 450 m2 to locate an asset below 10seconds, all depending on the mobility of the asset