This is the twelfth in a series of 12 weekly blog postings covering the major technology trends affecting conferences, events and trade shows:
12. “Indoor Positioning Systems” will greatly assist in event and trade show way-finding and navigation.
Standard GPS does not work indoors. Standard Wi-Fi triangulation only gets to about a 100 foot (30 meter) accuracy — not good enough for precise tracking though an exhibit hall, venue or for person-to-person finding at an event.
New technology from at least two companies (Wifarer.com and Sherpa-Solutions.com) promise to overcome these challenges to provide very precise positioning (as fine as 1 meter) by tracking Wi-Fi enabled smart phones, carried by an increasingly larger percentage of the population. These tools will be able to provide:
- precise positioning
- personal navigation through a venue/exhibit hall with optimized routing
- friend/contact finding and networking (with permission)
- location-based content delivery (exhibit discounts or video as examples)
- optimized exhibit hall viewing by product category
- exhibit hall “hot spot” and traffic flow analytics
- several other features will likely develop from this exciting technology.
In addition to venues and convention centers, this technology holds great promise for shopping centers, airports, hospitals and museums. A short video demonstrating the application in a museum can be seen below:
Wayfarer Indoor Positioning System
Check in next week for a bonus trend and a summary of the impact of technology innovation for events.
