UBIK kommuniziert mit iBeacons

Mobile and pervasive computing are just two trends that reshaped the way we handle information over the most recent years. The rapid growth of mobile devices and the increasing networking between them lead to an almost unlimited availability of information, which was changing a significant part of our everyday life for good. But the triumph of smart devices also comes with a price, most noticeably the unrestrained creation of data and the accompanying challenges to deal with it. Location based services can deliver great value there, by providing a continuous connection between data and the situation the user is currently in.
“Industry 4.0” and the “Internet of Things” injected pervasive computing into the industrial space. Augmensys was pioneering in leveraging many cutting-edge technologies for the industry from the very beginning, and those movements only confirm our way of bringing new technologies to the point where they deliver real value.

The  calculation for displaying Geo-based-AR information on the display of a smart device requires a lot of information. The position of the Point of Interest (POI), heading, pitch and roll, but most importantly the absolute position of the device. The closer the user is to the POI, the more accurate the positioning needs to be. While satellite-based technologies like GPS deliver a suitable accuracy outdoors, the challenges in indoor localization are incomparably bigger due to signal damping and signal loss. UBIK® can use different technologies for compensation, such as WiFi-Fingerprinting, reference positions and various dead-reckoning algorithms. But especially in the close-up range of a POI, this was still not good enough for the high standards we set ourselves.

This is why Augmensys started to investigate iBeacons and their potential for industrial use cases over a year ago, and today the results are an integral part of UBIK®, offering two different options:

iBeacon-Trilateration for accurate positioning of the mobile device, and
iBeacon-Proximity-Mode for determining areas the user is currently in -> see video at the end of this article

What are iBeacons?

iBeacons are small, battery-powered devices that use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for emitting unique identifiers in continuous intervals. The measured signal strength (RSSI – Received Signal Strength Indicator) is a raw indicator for the distance between the receiver and the Beacon. When receiving signals from at least three Beacons, the position of a mobile device can be calculated based on those measured values.