To compete effectively in the fast-pacing world and swiftly developing technologies, businesses have to be more innovative, efficient, and competitive, but save resources at the same time. As a result, affordable indoor tracking solutions combined with process monitoring and automation options are becoming more popular, and it is a window of opportunity for those looking for new market niches to profit.
Let’s get it straight - why would companies and organisations even need a positioning system indoors? Well, within sizable buildings such as warehouses, shopping malls and supermarkets, trade fairs, exhibition centres, airports, hospitals, complex public transport hubs, concert halls and sports arenas, managers and team leaders may spend a considerable amount of time managing and finding in a real-time what they are looking and accountable for - people, goods, and assets.
Organising and optimising these tedious daily routines in a new way by utilising modern technologies undoubtedly would save company recourses, effort, and time, would improve customer service and ROI, to say at least. Furthermore, with a dedicated third-party software in place, businesses can get a real-time overview of all registered assets on the site map, take an advantage of search and filtering functions, motion profiles, time-lapse changes, convenient asset/people registration and management routines, tracked objects dashboards, etc.
Since it became publicly available in the late 90s, the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology revolutionised outdoor positioning. Today billions of people around the world have at least one smart device with such positioning capabilities - a smartphone, tablet, or watch with built-in GPS or tracking device. But there is a major technical difficulty here - GPS signals often are not accurate enough to be practical indoors or in narrow streets as they diminish and scatter by surrounding structures - roofs and walls. Even more, a location error range of some GPS chips can be greater than the indoor space itself.
So, is there any way to overcome this obstacle and rip the benefits of location tracking and positioning indoors to ensure accurate indoor tracking where GNSS struggles?