Indoor Navigation Technology Exploration And Application In University Buildings

As commercial and industrial buildings are so complex, navigating inside of those buildings, findings rooms, and exits has become difficult, especially for the those who are new to the building. To overcome these difficulties, this research project is related to indoor navigation or wayfinding. Different technologies such as Wi-Fi positioning, Bluetooth, low energy beacon, ultrasonic, infrared, semantic maps, building information modeling, and augmented reality has been applied for indoor navigation due to the unavailability of global positioning system, which is extensively used in outdoor navigation. The purpose of this research is then to explore the literature of indoor navigation technologies, uses of as-built 3D scan use in indoor navigation, and to develop a prototype application by using as-built 3D scans to assist users who are new to the building and want to locate facilities. For example, finding the restroom or nearest exit-way in case of emergency. In this research, the prototype application is based on a 3D scan of the Roy F. Mitte (RFM) building. The research presents the results of the perception of students who visit the RFM building to evaluate if indoor navigation technology could assist them in navigating based on their facility needs. This research uses a mixed method to explore, analyze the data, and discuss the findings. This research also examines the potential of 3D scans and digital twins for use in emergency evacuation procedures inside of buildings. To fulfil the objectives of this research, the author used a Faro Laser scanner and scanned an as-built indoor hallway of the RFM building. Due to limitations, the author used the fourth floor of RFM building for the prototype development. The author collected 3D point clouds and converted them to mesh and generated an area target using Vuforia engine. Finally, the author exported the mesh model and area target to the Unity application to develop a prototype indoor navigation application using Vuforia engine and Unity.