The invention is said to localise a human being or an object within an accuracy of 1meter. According to the team, it works in any device having a Wi-Fi function and can be applied for numerous areas of human activity – from logistics to health care.
“Based on collected observations of human behaviour, intelligent systems can make decisions themselves. The crucial thing for collecting this kind of data is localisation and positioning of people and things indoors”, says Professor Egidijus Kazanavicius of KTU.
Positioning accuracy using WLAN is low, requiring WLAN-based positioning software to be installed into specific devices which accounts for rising product costs.
“We have invented the method which allows to localise things and persons within an accuracy of 1metre and which can be installed into an existing device having a Wi-Fi sender/receiver and a data processor,” says Prof Kazanavicius.
The challenge of WLAN-based indoors positioning is the Wi-Fi pollution – in most environments around 35-40 thousand possible coordinates of a certain device can be detected. The method invented by KTU researchers is based on scanning the surrounding wireless stations, choosing the two which emit the strongest signals and on multiple measuring of distance between the stations and the device. The mathematical methods are being used for determining the position within an accuracy of 1metre.
The researchers believe one possible application could be care. A set of additional sensors integrated into the system can help monitoring the chronically ill or elderly patients, the KTU team suggest.
Elderly care is one among many other possible areas of application of the innovation. The method allows to determine the exact human positions, i.e. it is possible to tell if a person is standing or lying.
Smart industry solutions, such as advanced process control technologies, human-machine interface, condition monitoring, smart logistics with advanced transport, real-time warehouse management are some of the other areas which the KTU team believe could additionally benefit from this WLAN-based method.