Newly updated comprehensive report on indoor location technologies

NEWLY UPDATED: Comprehensive Report on Indoor Location Technologies
http://www.grizzlyanalytics.com/report_2017_01_indoor.html

The indoor location area is exploding, and will soon reach a tipping point in adoption.

The above line has been the opening sentiment of Grizzly Analytics reports on Indoor Location since 2011, when our first report on indoor location was published. The logic has always been clear: The numbers of companies deploying their solutions in trials skyrocketed each year, and mobile app users are so dependent on outdoor location awareness in their mobile apps that the demand for indoor is clear.

Unfortunately, while the number of indoor location solutions reaching market has risen dramatically, the number of indoor location systems entering true commercial use, beyond trials or experiments, has not yet truly taken off.

Why hasn't indoor location taken off yet? Will it? When?

Grizzly Analytics believes that the answer is multifaceted but a resounding YES. Four challenges have been preventing indoor location technologies from crossing the chasm. And all four are now reaching tipping points, with solutions profiled in this report solving the challenges successfully. With these challenges solved, the industry can truly reach its huge potential.

First, many indoor location systems are achieving significantly better accuracy than was achieved 2-3 years ago.

Second, many solutions today are requiring less tedious setup and configuration than was previously required. This includes use of SLAM and crowdsourcing technologies.

Third, M&A and strategic partnerships has brought the innovations of start-up companies into the strength of major companies.

Fourth, a mature ecosystem has developed in which companies are specializing in vertical industries, and incorporating location technologies from other vendors.

These trends will, we believe, drive a rise in full commercial deployments by the end of 2017, and integration with mass-market apps in 2018.

This newly-updated Grizzly Analytics report on Indoor Location Technologies gives technology details of how all of this is happening.

Intel demos indoor location technology in new Wi-Fi chips at MWC 2015

Intel made several announcements at MWC 2015, including a new chipset for wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi) in mobile devices. This new chipset, the 8270, include in-chip support for indoor location positioning. Below we explain their technology and show a video of it in action. With this announcement, Intel joins Broadcom, Qualcomm and other chip makers in moving broad indoor location positioning into mobile device hardware.

The transition of indoor location positioning into chips is a trend identified in the newest Grizzly Analytics report on Indoor Location Positioning Technologies, released the week before MWC 2015. By moving indoor location positioning from software into hardware, chips such as Intel's enable location positioning to run continuously and universally, without using device CPU, and with less power consumption.

Intel's technology delivers 1-3 meter accuracy, using a technique called multilateration, generating a new location estimate every second. While 1-3 meter …

Seeing Quuppa's indoor location technology at MWC 2015

I first met Fabio and Kimmo from Quuppa in 2012, before Quuppa existed, when they had spent years researching indoor location positioning technologies at Nokia Research Center. Less than a year after that they formed Quuppa, independent of Nokia, to bring their technology to market. At the time I called Quuppa "the newest and oldest in indoor location positioning."

Fast forward two and a half years. Their technology has reached market, it can now track both smartphones and BLE devices, and it's accurate to within 20-50cm. Before reading more about their technology, take a look at a video of their demo in action:

Grizzly Analytics has analyzed indoor location technologies by over 150 companies, and virtually all of the radio-based technologies operate by measuring the distance between the device being tracked and other radio devices, and using these distance measurements for either multilateration or fingerprinting. For example, the well known BLE beacons measure a device…

Robot Camera Foreshadows an Era of Location-Aware Electronics

A French company called Move 'N See produces a line of camera robots. Their devices act as a smart tripod, holding a video camera and automatically moving and zooming the camera as people of interest move around a site.

The idea is simple but amazingly innovative. Photo selfies are easy to take, but video selfies are next to impossible. How can I video myself playing football or doing gymnastics, without setting the camera so far back as to be useless? Do spectators want to spend an entire sporting event carefully videoing their friend or relative moving around the field?
Enter Move 'N See's "personal robot cameramen." Their devices aim, pan and zoom a video camera as one or more people move around an area. The people of interest wear armbands whose locations are tracked, enabling the camera controller to know where to aim the camera. The camera controller also includes enough smarts to adjust the camera smoothly and to capture multiple people evenly. The armband…

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