Aplicaziones has led the introduction into the Spanish market of tracking and accurate location solutions for people in scenarios with poor or no GPS coverage (GPS denied areas), like in sporting events, tunnels , airports, hospitals and shopping malls.
Already in 2011 we made the first demonstrations of accurate indoor positioning systems for emergency units at Marañosa Institute of Technology (ITM) - R&D institute of the Spanish Ministry of Defense – showing the management of missions in Critical Infrastructures. View press release.
These solutions, however, are based on a proprietary HW/SW, difficult to adapt to specific customer projects. Some of them required supporting infrastructure to be used as beacons, involving high cost deployments only affordable by few institutions and customers. Given the evolution of microelectronics in recent years, we believe that the development of a new generation of low cost solutions is now possible without the need of supporting infrastructure. This is why Aplicaziones has launched its own R&D project for the development of indoor accurate location solution during 2015.
System architecture
In order to reduce solution costs, our project aims to minimize the need to deploy supporting infrastructure for indoor positioning or urban scenarios with bad GNSS coverage (GPS denied). As the problem is not easy to solve, our solution is based on the use of multiple strategies ( SLAM: Simultaneous Localization And Mapping ) for positioning and subsequent merger to determine accurately the position
We can briefly point out the use of the following methods:
- GNSS: information from satellite navigations systems is used for outdoor positioning and boundary areas.
- Inertial sensors: using terminal internal sensors (gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer and barometer) and algorithms applied to body movements we can estimate user position.
- Magnetic fields: a record (fingerprint) of the magnetic fields of the stage is done in order to create a map that can be used as reference
- Radio signals: we also conduct a scene recognition (fingerprint) and we generate a map showing the signal levels that are then used as reference.
In addition, these strategies may also be used to increase the accuracy outdoors, so that interference of GNSS (multipaths) are minimized.
The project development will also comprise a 3D console for command and control. It will allow to visualize the scene in order to determine, monitor and control the pathways of people inside buildings.
Our solution will be the first in the market to merge these four location strategies in a low-cost product.
Aplicaziones plans to develop this product based on a business model of monthly license fee per terminal and 3D monitoring console.
An evolution of the R & D of this solution for the security market is planned under the name of GPSA (Guard Positioning Situation Awareness). In this case, the user will also have the relevant scenario information (sound, video, etc.) and the location of the other guards in real time.
You can see our development progress in our blog describing Veloz first trials in Q1 of this year.
A version of this product for evaluation and testing by customers will be available in Q2 2016.