Multimodal and collaborative localisation service for diverse environments

Context-awareness and particularly location awareness will be vital for mobile applications in the coming years. However, determining the location of a mobile device is a very complex task. Various localization systems have been developed in the past but all have their strengths and weaknesses in certain environments. Compared to specialized devices, such as car navigation systems, smart phones are used in very diverse environments. Therefore this device class should utilize a wide range of localization methods to be able to determine its position in the majority of environments. The aim of this work is to develop an architecture for a smart phone that is able to integrate various types of positioning systems, such as GPS, optical- and radio-based systems, and built-in sensors. A prototypic application that integrates GPS, NFC, and QR codes and a step-detection, based on compass and acceleration sensors, was implemented to show the feasibility of the approach. The developed architecture can easily be extended by further localization systems in a universal manner.