Magnetic Indoor Positioning

This is a really cool solution to indoor mapping/positioning using differences in magnetic fields within a building. Currently, it’s designed for utilizing the sensors in smartphones but this could be ported to NETMF once it takes off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkehW3fkpLQ&feature=player_embedded

Clever!

As far as being clever, yes and no as while magnetic fields exist, they also can change for all sorts of reasons, for example a minor layout change or even stock level change (in say canned goods) in the store and you might need to redo the map. I remember we tried to do something similar with the HTC HD2 and build a metal detector using changes in magnetic deviations, still it was interesting.

I tend to agree with @ Duke Nukem, and you would need to take into account power fluctuations as well. A novel idea.

@ Duke - They claim to be measuring differences in the fields due to the metal structure of the building. I realize that the items within the structure obviously would cause their own changes but I wonder if they can be filtered out when compared to the mass of steel used to build large structures. Also, if the smartphone software were bi-directional then it could actually update the map with new measurements as people walked about since there would almost always be good points on either side of a changed area. This is all speculation but I think it’s the way I would do it :wink: