An indoor campus navigation system for users with disabilities

Abstract

While supporting navigation outside buildings is currentlywell solved through GPS-based systems, only a few solutions support indoor navigation and user positioning in large buildings. In this paper, we propose a solution to support such navigation by creating a dedicated hierarchical map of the building and associating it with the infrastructure of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmitters installed in the building. Then a user equipped with a smartphone can easily read the signals of these transmitters and, thanks to the map, can determine their position in space.We use our method in a system that supports navigation and user safety, emphasizing users with special needs, which we are implementing on our academic campus. We describe the idea, architecture, and implementation of this system.