Indoor GPS: Explained
As I've mentioned before, finding a room in a building or complex you’ve never visited before can be tricky. Even when given a number, you have to decipher whether the number includes the floor, the direction, or the building, and if there are multiple hallways in these buildings you’re pretty much stuck wandering around like you’re on a scavenger hunt. Although we do have maps and information centers to give you directions, nothing would be quite as helpful as a fully functioning GPS.
There are two versions of this potential product:
- A phone application.
This app would be almost like a 3D map that will help users know which corners to turn, what building to go to, and what floor to get off of the elevator on. It could tell students how many steps or doors down their classroom is, and let them know which side of the hallway it is on. This application could also be used in apartment complexes, hospitals, and maybe even malls. This application could be free and downloadable onto smartphones, iPods, iPads, and other tablets and smart devices.
- A small, rentable device.
Have you ever been to a museum and taken a self-guided tour where they give you a small listening device, almost like an iPod, that you can touch to listen to descriptions of different paintings or exhibits. I would like something of that nature, it should include pictures of where you’re going within the building as well as some real-time directions as to how you should get there, whether it be which corridor to use or what door to go through. Museums, malls, universities, schools, or other complex buildings can lend these out to patrons for certain periods of time to help them familiarize themselves with their surroundings.
I think that because a similar technology to my desired product already exists, it would be fairly simple to modify and improve upon it to include the indoors and make lives easier.
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteThis opportunity is quite interesting and would be extremely helpful. I can definitely relate to constantly getting lost, especially on campus since I usually take online classes. I believe that an app would be more convenient because it’s already on the device most people have readily available in their pockets. It would be difficult to obtain, however, because of the amount of buildings in the U.S alone, but it definitely won’t be impossible!
Hey Jessica,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a cool idea! This would definitely be helpful in Turlington here at UF. You could have a QR code in buildings that translate to the app on people’s phones. If this expanded to something like the grocery store or shopping centers, do you think that this could replace some jobs of those employees that help direct shoppers? I know for a University this is ideal, because google maps can only help you but so much. This indoor GPS could help solve a lot of confusion.
Hey Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI remember you had talked about this idea in a previous post and I definitely see the potential with this. It would be interesting in how you would execute it with the possibility of GPS signal interference from roofs. A suggestion would be to maybe incorporate a pacer app that tracks how many steps you take, which might help solve this problem