I-Corps: iLooc-Commercialization Feasibility Research and Implementation of Indoor Smartphone Localization via Indoor Positioning Satellites and Opportunistic Sensing

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

A large number of mobile services such as location-based services, maps, and navigation systems have been developed when smartphones were enabled with GPS. However, about 80% of mobile data consumption originates from and indoor environment where GPS will not work. Current location services are mainly for outdoor and severely limited when applied in more pervasive indoor environment. More pervasive fine-grained indoor location techniques could enable new mobile engagement scenarios. For example, it would not be possible to welcome a customer into a store with a personal message and recommendation; offer an in-store deal or deliver a coupon in front of specific cereal boxes; deliver biographies or art commentary on a specific object when wandering through a museum; or remind users of social events within proximity. All these could lead to more context-aware mobile computing and move towards a holistic mobile smart life. The proposed technology will usher in enormous opportunities with transformative impacts in broad domains. Using off-the-shelf smartphones with the proposed technology, various indoor location services such as indoor navigation, near-field advertising, augmented-reality, mobile education/campus/health and entertainment, and shopping/tour guides can be revolutionized. This I-Corps team has developed iLooc, an indoor positioning system that is both convenient and can be deployed at relatively low cost. Current day indoor position systems are too coarse-grained (room-level or multi-meter level) for many indoor mobile applications. Though significant progress has been made over the last decade on indoor localization for smart and mobile phones, cost and convenience are two factors that are still limitations for wide scale adoption of these technologies. The iLooc ecosystem developed by the team consists of a set of indoor positioning satellites, an app on a smartphone (iOS or Android) for opportunistic sensing (with IPS,WiFi, BLE, and GPS), and a cloud server for offloading heavy processing, location services and content management. The algorithm used can localize position to within 5 centimeters. The system relies only on off the shelf smartphones, using no specialized hardware and thereby reducing cost. Similar to outdoor GPS, the system is passively synchronized and doesn't require information back from the smartphone. This type of system is much more convenient and scalable for large number of users. The team has tested the ecosystem in several indoor environments including classrooms, museums, and shopping centers.