Augmented Reality for Indoor Localization and Navigation: The Case of UNIPI AR Experience

Indoor localization and navigation is a common problem mostly in large buildings where multiple floors, rooms and corridors may generate a struggling experience for the visitor. The complex internal environment, the composite architectural designs and the interference of objects and people in crowded areas, make the adoption of generic solutions hard to implement and apply, while their performance and the provided user experience do not meet the typical operational requirements. Different ways to achieve indoor localization are examined, but all require either static interventions (QR codes) or installing IoT sensors. In this work we present an AR Navigation System solution which utilizes a mobile device's ability to exploit Augmented Reality (AR) for indoor localization and mapping. At the core of the system is a hybrid platform (cloud/edge), which enables the generate immersive AR navigation experiences. Key contribution of this work is the use of the aforementioned platform for introducing an AR "checkpoint" navigation system which integrates our algorithms for indoor localization, path planning, point of interest visualization and device interoperability. A prototype of the overall solution has already been implemented and it is deployed at the University of Piraeus for evaluation from students, personnel and visitors.