Beacon-based indoor wayfinding system with automated beacon placement

Abstract

An automated process designs an indoor wayfinding system using wireless beacons interacting with a mobile smartphone to guide a user to a destination. Image processing and computational geometric techniques extracting necessary information about an indoor space to determine beacon placement and support path computations for navigation. An architectural floor plan of the indoor space of interest is scanned to extract all the points of interest (doors, stairs, elevators, etc.), to identify walking paths within this space, and to create a connectivity graph representation of the space upon which path computations for navigation can be performed. Optimized locations where beacons should be placed on the indoor floor plan are identified very quickly and with minimal effort.