4 interesting ways to use indoor “GPS”

Let’s see where Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System can find use.

February 10, 2023

by

Aleksandra Szczepaniak

Set of Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System

The Global Positioning System is used worldwide and has become a standard tool for almost everybody. How else would you be able to find your location in unknown terrain and reach the desired destination? And how about an indoor “GPS”? Nowadays, navigation, inspection, and tracking of both mobile assets and people in a particular closed area are becoming more and more demanded in any industry. And that brings me to Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System and its uses.

What is Marvelmind Indoor “GPS”?

Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System is an off-the-shelf, ready-to-use system for 2D/3D tracking in robotics and industrial applications. The system's designed to provide highly precise (±2cm) indoor coordinates, which makes it the world's most accurate commercially available indoor real-time location system (RTLS), or indoor positioning system (IPS). It's based on stationary ultrasonic beacons connected by a radio interface in a license-free ISM band.

The location of a mobile beacon attached to a robot (or vehicle, drone, human, etc.) is calculated in accordance with the delay in the propagation of the ultrasonic signal to a set of stationary ultrasonic beacons with the use of trilateration.

How can Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System be used?

The Marvelmind device can have plenty of applications. And interestingly, although the system is called an indoor “GPS”, its uses don’t have to be indoor per se. In fact, it can be any area with the beacons mounted in particular spots, so that it will allow to map the zone and track objects in it. Wherever there’s an established area in which a robot is supposed to run automatically, or with people wearing the Marvelmind tracking devices (watches, badges, helmets, jackets, headlights), the Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System’s applications are numerous. It can be anything you can think of, really. Here are some of the most interesting and practical ones.

Warehouses

Warehouse

Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System can surely come in handy in many aspects in warehouses. For example, it can be used in autonomous robots whose job is to carry boxes between the warehouse and the assembly line. Also, by tracking both workers and forklifts, it can increase productivity and safety as the system enables to collect the real-time location data and optimize the routes of forklifts and staff. And based on the task and the location of forklifts, the Marvelmind device could allow to automatically assign tasks to the nearest vehicle. Thus, gaining precise knowledge about speed, acceleration, and position of the mobile assets and also the location of workers adds up to providing smooth workflow and preventing accidents in the process. What’s more, the navigation system could be applied for warehouse inspection with the use of either ground robots or drones.

Hazardous working areas

Hazardous working area

Another use that can be found for the Marvelmind Indoor “GPS” is in working areas that may pose a threat to the workers such as construction sites, mines, manufacturing factories, etc.

Applying the set of Marvelmind devices in such working environments can make a significant contribution to the workers’ safety. Thanks to obtaining data about the location of particular zones, objects, and people, as well as their movements, the system may be programmed to warn the workers about approaching a danger zone. And similar to the previous example, Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System can also be used in inspection drones and ground robots in the case of hazardous working areas, minimizing the likelihood of any harm to a human.

Museums

Museum

A different kind of facility that the Marvelmind GPS system can be of use is museums. Providing museum visitors with the system’s beacons will enable to track them to analyze their visiting patterns and thus, to better organize the display. Additionally, the devices can come in handy for, say, interactive museum exhibitions – depending on the type of badge a visitor is wearing (color), the displays could present various multimedia content aimed at a particular target audience – children, professionals, general audience, as the badge type would be reserved to a particular group of visitors. What’s more, instead of a typical human guide, this mantle could be taken up by a mobile robot that would give the visitors a tour following a predefined route.

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality

An interesting field for Marvelmind Indoor “GPS” applications could also be virtual reality and augmented reality. For example, the device might find use in industrial VR training on nuclear stations. It may also come in handy for commercial applications, for instance, selling houses with the means of virtual reality as well as in the case of VR games. The 3D coordinates of the mobile beacons mounted on the VR goggles could be transmitted directly to a smartphone via a USB cable. This solution would enable the player’s avatar to move in the virtual reality in sync and with high accuracy with the player’s movements in the real world.

Track your Leo Rover with Marvelmind Indoor “GPS”

The Marvelmind Indoor “GPS” applications presented above are merely a few of numerous ones. The only limitation here is your imagination. If you got your hands on the device, the only thing left to do now is to use it with a Leo Rover :) Check out our tutorial to know how to connect Marvelmind Indoor Navigation System to your Leo Rover.

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