Project: Integral Indoor 3D Guidance and Access-Control System

Large public structures and facilities play an ever-growing part in our everyday lives. These include large office buildings, shopping malls, rail stations, airports, museums and other public buildings where most visitors are unfamiliar and want to find a specific destination or object (an office, a train platform, a parked car, an exhibited work of art). In many cases, providing information relevant to the path taken within the building can assist such visitors, for example: information in a museum about other artworks along the way, information about departing trains in a train station, or information about automatic payment stations when looking for a parked car. An additional level of complexity is required when access is limited to certain areas on the premises. In such cases access control systems are often installed._x000D__x000D_The CO goal of this project is to develop a product that guides people within such premises to their indoor destination using only their mobile phone and local communication networks (without necessarily using cellular operators' infrastructure). Augmented Reality (A.R.) will assist them in identifying their destination or the object they are looking for (e.g. a parked car). The system is intended for operation by the operating entity of such premises to increase macroscopic efficiency and people's mobility. The system will also be accessible from fixed terminals within the building, (static information points with the building's 3D directory preloaded)._x000D__x000D_To achieve this, the project will utilize all of the mobile phone's capabilities (camera, screen, location system, compass, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc). Images taken by the camera will be used to guide the user and provide virtual information in a superposed layer of Augmented Reality._x000D__x000D_The prototype will have the architecture proposed in [FIGURE1] and [FIGURE2], both included in the annex to this document._x000D__x000D_The technological goal at the basis of this prototype is the “dynamic routing” between two points. A user located at some starting point is guided by the system to a desired destination point. In order to reach this objective, a series of technological problems have been taken into consideration: _x000D__x000D_The first technological problem is the peoples' location inside large buildings. The simpler problem of locating people or objects outdoors is commonly solved nowadays with existing technologies such as GPS, with which a fast and precise location may be measured anywhere on the planet. There are some outdoor surroundings in which GPS is not sufficient, and this is also the case for the majority of indoor environments. This will be solved by developing a "Local Positioning System" (LPS), which is basically an alternative locating system designed to work indoors. The project will design a fusion of Bluetooth, Wifi and GSM/UMTS signals transmitted from the same mobile phone and will triangulate it according to "differential time of arrival" methods to provide high accuracy positioning wherever possible. These technologies will allow us to identify and locate mobile phones upon activation of project's software (the "navigation tool") in a resolution of up to 1 meter. _x000D__x000D_The second technological problem is the actual guidance within the building in real time. Once the person is located indoors, guiding through the building is not necessarily trivial: a diverse range of guiding technologies can be used, such as augmented reality over images from the phone's camera to provide appropriate instructions for reaching the destination._x000D__x000D_Finally, the last point to be considered indoors is access control. Some buildings limit the access to areas according to a set of privileges. It is therefore necessary that the system will be able to associate a person to privileges relevant to locations in the building and to content related to areas and objects inside it._x000D__x000D_A solid consoritium of highly relevant and complementing Ps has been formed to achieve these objectives. Treelogic, as the project coordinator, has significant experience in managing R&D projects and is an expert in Augmented Reality applications, specifically for mobile devices; DFRC are location technology experts and will provide an indoor location system; IMA will derive a specific version of its already successfully disseminated IDSIMA K4 identification system, in which current access control transactions will be extended to 3D positioning. In addition to this, two specific research groups are taking part as subcontractors, in order to add key knowledge focused on signal processing (location) and 3D technologies (A.R.) to the consortium.

Acronym In3DGuide (Reference Number: 6429)
Duration 01/10/2011 - 30/11/2013
Project Topic IN3DGuide project goal is to provide an integral indoor guidance system and access control based on last generation mobile devices capabilities and Augmented Reality technology.
Project Results
(after finalisation)
The CO results of the IMA part of the project is a fully working Mobile-based access control system featuring a universal NFC reader with an Android identification app and an online ticketing solution integrated with access control system. _x000D_
Network Eurostars
Call Eurostars Cut-Off 6

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
5 DFRC AG Partner Switzerland
5 Institut mikroelektronických aplikací s.r.o. Partner Czech Republic
5 TREELOGIC TELEMATICA Y LOGICA RACIONAL PARA LA EMPRESA EUROPEA S.L. Coordinator Spain
5 University of Bern Partner Switzerland
5 University of Bern Partner Switzerland