I-Corps: An Accurate and Accessible Indoor Positioning Technology

I-Corps：一种准确且易于使用的室内定位技术

• 批准号: 1661441
• 负责人: Roman Lubynsky
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1661441&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Accurate; Accessible; Indoor; Positioning

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is centered around the ability to potentially reinvent interactions with indoor spaces. Similar to how GPS has revolutionized how we explore the world outdoors, indoor positioning can augment indoor experience with new information; having impact through the whole chain from end users to the surrounding industries. For example, the ability to track critical equipment indoors can save lives as in the hospital ER, understanding the flow of people inside of buildings can optimize our approach to energy management, and the availability of precise navigation indoors can be used by both humans and robots to streamline factory and warehouse operations. Commercially, the opportunity for this technology is significant. The general indoor positioning market is estimate to grow 42% annually to $10 billion by 2018. Today's indoor positioning solutions remain imprecise and/or too cumbersome to deploy - diluting their commercial and societal impact to date. This technology fills a crucial gap in this space by providing indoor positioning that is at the same time accurate, compatible with today's devices, and easy to deploy.This I-Corps project concerns an indoor positioning platform that is accurate, compatible with any Wi-Fi enabled user device (smartphones, tablets), and easily deployable. Research in this area has led to the development of hardware and algorithms that allow for sub-meter position accuracy indoors via easily manufactured compact Wi-Fi nodes built from commodity hardware. Simply placing these nodes at known locations in any indoor space allows for immediate positioning of user devices without additional pre-deployment effort. While GPS has revolutionized outdoor positioning, it does not work indoors. Current non-GPS solutions to this problem compromise accuracy, or require expensive hardware or calibration in the environment. This solution is both easy to deploy and accurate, filling an important gap in the indoor positioning industry.

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力集中在重塑室内空间互动的能力上。就像GPS彻底改变了我们探索户外世界的方式一样，室内定位可以用新的信息增强室内体验；影响从终端用户到周边行业的全产业链。例如，跟踪室内关键设备的能力可以像在医院急诊室一样挽救生命，了解建筑物内的人员流动可以优化我们的能源管理方法，室内精确导航的可用性可以被人类和机器人用来简化工厂和仓库的操作。在商业上，这项技术的机会是巨大的。一般的室内定位市场预计将以每年42%的速度增长，到2018年将达到100亿美元。今天的室内定位解决方案仍然不精确，或者部署起来过于繁琐，这削弱了它们迄今为止的商业和社会影响。这项技术填补了这一领域的一个关键空白，它提供了准确的室内定位，与当今的设备兼容，并且易于部署。这个I-Corps项目涉及一个室内定位平台，该平台准确，与任何支持Wi-Fi的用户设备（智能手机、平板电脑）兼容，并且易于部署。这一领域的研究已经导致了硬件和算法的发展，通过由商品硬件构建的易于制造的紧凑型Wi-Fi节点，可以在室内实现亚米级的定位精度。只需将这些节点放置在任何室内空间的已知位置，就可以立即定位用户设备，而无需额外的预部署工作。虽然GPS已经彻底改变了室外定位，但它并不适用于室内。目前针对该问题的非gps解决方案会降低精度，或者需要昂贵的硬件或在环境中进行校准。该解决方案部署方便、定位准确，填补了室内定位行业的重要空白。