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EUROSTARS: Spanish company is looking for a partner specialized in digital video processing, artificial vision applications and data analysis for the development of an improved indoor location technology

Country of Origin: Spain
Reference Number: RDES20191205001
Publication Date: 5 December 2019

Summary

A Spanish tech-based company is preparing a Eurostars proposal for the development of a improved indoor location technology. It is based on a mobile application that offers a catalogue of incremental services of location and guide in interiors from images and measurements of radiofrequency captured by the user's own mobile. The company is looking for a partner with expertise in video processing, artificial vision applications and data analysis.

Description

The indoor location market offers innumerable functionalities both to end users (accessibility services in airports, tourist guidance, personalized commercial offers ...) and to space managers.



Nevertheless, an optimal precision indoor location is still a challenge:  

-Vision-based technologies present limited potential in situations of high density of people

-Systems based on wireless devices offer low accuracy due to the lack of proportionality between the intensity received and the actual distance to the object indoors.

-Those based on inertial mobile phone systems suffer exponential degradation as they move away from the original known reference.



For all these reasons, indoor location continues to be a scientific and technological challenge that needs innovative perspectives for its resolution.



In addition, these techniques suffer from a clear lack of privacy regarding the information about the users they collect, a factor that shows a growing rejection. This rejection is even clearer towards the recording of images, which greatly limits the deployment of such solutions.



Despite the technical and privacy obstacles described, location-based services provide obvious benefits to both parties, users and space managers (commercial, cultural, transportation, etc.), which makes the generation of new technologies necessary and adapted to the requirements of each other. 



The EUROSTARS project proposed by the Spanish company contributes to the solution of this problem, proposing a new collaborative paradigm in which the mobile phone calculates its position from integrated vision and radio frequency information, also assisted by references provided from the infrastructure. In this way, the accuracy of the measures is increased and the user's privacy is ensured.



At the same time, this approach allows defining different levels of service and information sharing. A first level will consist of a network of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons (BLE) that will emit information about position, allowing the phone to locate a zone. The second level will display a set of BIDI (Bi-Directional) or QR (Quick Response) codes that will provide exact position references, but without spatial continuity. These first two levels of location will be offered for free and transparent, without requiring any type of transfer of user data to the infrastructure.



Higher levels will offer higher accuracy and guided guidance and navigation services by augmented reality. These will require the user to share information under a quid pro quo approach. Thus, the third level of location will use pre-set visual references, on walls, floors or ceilings, which the user will capture through the camera of his mobile, obtaining his precise position. This position will be sent to the platform so that it calculates a statistical mapping of the signal strength at each point and corrects the estimate generated from the BLE beacons, following an approach similar to that used outdoors by differential GPS systems. The fourth level will imply the user's self-positioning based on the images of the environment. In these cases, the system will offer the user a high precision guided service by augmented reality.



Additionally, business analytics modules will be developed to model the behaviour of registered users and, from it, generate new marketing and loyalty campaigns, offer personalized services and products and, ultimately, improve the customer experience at the facilities.



The Spanish company, specialized in IT technological solutions is looking for a partner specialized in digital video processing, artificial vision applications and data analysis for the development of this EUROSTARS project.



The partner sought role will be collaboration in the radiofrequency location system and implementation of algorithms to improve the accuracy of visual location.



The submission deadline is the February 13 and the deadline for expressions of interest is  January 27

Requested partner

- Type of partner sought: Company specialized in digital video processing, artificial vision applications and expert in the intelligent processing of information on data access platforms.



- Specific area of activity of the partner: Company specialized in digital video processing and artificial vision applications and data analysis.



- Task to be performed: Collaboration in the radiofrequency location system and implementation of algorithms to improve the accuracy of visual location