Waiting Time Estimation Method Using BLE and 2D-LiDAR

On campuses such as that of universities, several people eat in a limited amount of time in a small cafeteria. Because users have limited time, it is important to know the waiting times and congestion levels in advance, to eliminate wastage of time. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate actual waiting times by estimating the causes of congestion. Specifically, we estimate the number of people using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and the concentration of people in specific locations using two dimensional light detection and ranging (2D-LiDAR) to estimate the required time. We evaluated the method by simultaneously making measurements and observations at a restaurant on a university campus during lunchtime. The results showed that it was possible to clearly distinguish between cases where the restaurant was crowded and cases where it took a long time to eat.