A research team led by KAIST Professor Dong-Soo Han from the Department of Computer Science announced this month that they have developed a Wi-Fi-based indoor navigation system called KAIST Location System (KAILOS). KAILOS implements crowdsourcing, the practice of soliciting contributions from the general public and including them in the service’s production process. Instead of introducing groundbreaking technology, KAILOS utilizes existing wireless local area network (LAN) that can be set up on a global scale for only a small cost.

 

Until now, companies have tailored indoor positioning system (IPS) services using state-of-the-art technology for special event purposes, so every navigation application is not only different from each other but also very specific to a building or site. This can be inconvenient for the users who have to download another application every time they find themselves in a new location. However, KAILOS is a free and comprehensive application that can be used in any location whose building and wireless LAN information are registered.

 

Setting up the indoor radio plan of a building with KAILOS happens in a few steps. To start, the building’s location and other information, including the layouts of all the floors, must be registered on their homepage (http://kailos.io). Then set is the path along which wireless LAN signals and sensor data are to be collected before the actual gathering of data via the smartphone application along that same path. After the collection of data, the information is sent to the servers, and the navigation system in the building is ready for use.

 

According to the research team, the positional error in an environment with good Wi-Fi signals amounts to a mere five meters, which is expected to significantly improve with increasing number of users. Professor Han is also planning to use the information gained from the various sensors, such as the three-axis accelerometer, the gyroscope, and the baroscope, embedded in smartphones to enhance the system’s accuracy.

 

In 2010, Professor Han received recognition for being the world’s first to apply a Wi-Fi-based indoor navigation system in the trade center COEX and as a result, was awarded the 2011 IT Innovation Presidential Award. He also received the Creative Economy Premier Award in 2013 for his development of the IPS setup support system and the indoor-outdoor integrated system.