Forkbeard 2022 - Skattefunn

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Humans rely daily on digital navigation solutions to not only save time and cost, but also to power new services and products. We use GPS to navigate outdoors, and search engines to navigate the internet. However, indoors we completely lack technology-based solutions. Instead, we rely on physical maps and the help of others. Most indoor positioning technologies require tradeoffs between the four key enablers that have powered digital solutions for outdoor and internet navigation: accuracy, reliability, scalability and affordability. Today’s commercial solutions can be categorized into two groups. First, solutions that are accurate and reliable (e.g., UWB based), lack scalability due to bandwidth constraints and are not affordable for large scale deployments. Second, solutions that are scalable and affordable (e.g., BLE and WIFI based), but are missing accuracy and reliability due to the inherent nature of the radiofrequencies used. This R&D project focuses on the improvements of an indoor positioning technology that, by combining ultrasonic and Bluetooth signals, delivers on all four key enablers for a global indoor positioning technology. The project will focus on further developing the signal processing algorithms, software and hardware that allow indoor positioning and navigation for off-the-shelf phones and tags. The current technology system consist of (a) battery-powered beacons that can run uninterrupted and emit signals for 5+ years, (b) algorithms that process the beacon’s signals on end user devices such as phones and tags, and (c) cloud service that is responsible for setting up the system and streaming the positioning data into a database. The overall goal of the project will be to push the boundaries of the final frontier of navigation by delivering innovation that will move indoor positioning solutions closer to global commercial deployments across industries, similar to GPS and search engine technologies today.