Cambridge Consultants unveils low cost indoor locator system

The device is composed of a series of sensors and uses a custom algorithm to combine the data and determine location to an accuracy of within 1%. "We are excited about the many possibilities this cutting edge technology opens up and the impact it can have in many different situations," said Geoff Smithson, technology director of sensing systems at Cambridge Consultants. "It could be used to help locate firefighters in smoke filled buildings, for example, or to pinpoint the closest doctor in a hospital during an emergency – or to track offenders during home curfews." The new device platform can be embedded in an existing design or operate as a standalone unit, with options to compute the location locally or transmit the information to a remote system which can process the data before visualising it on a smartphone app. "Our biggest challenges were developing an algorithm which optimally combines the data from GPS and the other sensors, and overcoming the issues of using such low cost sensors in a system without any absolute location reference," said Smithson.