Indoor geolocation or positioning is a fast-growing and novel emerging technology, with immense
market potential across consumer, enterprise, and industrial applications. It has attracted both large
corporations as well as start-ups in a bid to produce the best solution in the marketplace.
The technology is at an early stage but has the potential to quickly mature, given the wide variety of
research and development globally. Most solutions work by determining the location and direction of a
person or product in real time. The technology can be either network-based (where the base stations
extract location metrics in determining location), handset/device-based (the mobile device estimates its
position from multiple broadcasting stations), or a hybrid of the two.
Commercial applications are numerous, ranging from warehouse shipment tracking, navigating a
burning building for firefighters, to tracking people with special needs in hospitals. Similarly,
applications in the consumer space include enhancing the retail customer experience, advertising and
promotions, or tracking children who are away from visual supervision. The U.S. Federal
Communication Commission is also planning to use indoor positioning to improve its emergency
services in the future.
Major tech providers such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all exploring the use of different
technologies that can provide such services, each with a slightly different target market. Key areas of
development include the technology for navigation, the platform on which the service runs, and the
base-maps that will make such solutions more viable.
In addition, there are numerous smaller companies working on their own unique technologies and IP globally. Due to this high volume of activity and potential market applications, IDC expects indoor positioning solutions to quickly mature in
the next two to three year
MIMOS Indoor Location Navigation and Tracking System (Mi-Tuju) provides indoor maps and location
information for easy indoor navigation. For building operators, it tracks indoor visitors and provides
visitor information. In the absence or lack of GPS signals indoors, Mi-Tuju leverages on WiFi and BLE
signals to detect and track locations in real time. Mi-Tuju is developed on an indoor location platform,
Mi-ILP. Mi-Tuju provides indoor navigation and a central web dashboard, Mi-MIST, for building
operators.
Key Features
Indoor location positioning and navigation: Mi-Tuju can accurately display a position in real
time and navigate to locations of interest such as retail shops, ATMs, or facilities such as
restrooms, lifts, and fire exits.
Nearby person identification and panic beacon: Users who have the Mi-Tuju app can be
immediately located and identified, and in an emergency, the app can send a panic beacon to
the building operator
