[Updated July 2022]
You might have noticed us saying that we make the world more accessible by guiding you anywhere anytime. And you might wonder how that’s connected with indoor navigation - how can an indoor navigation provider guide someone anywhere?
We can, because our MapsIndoors solution is built with Google Maps, which allows us to offer seamless indoor-outdoor navigation.
Two different navigation systems
Indoor-outdoor navigation is not a given when you’re choosing your indoor navigation provider. The challenge is that outdoor navigation and indoor navigation are based on two different systems. When you’re in outdoor environments, your digital navigation solution, like Google Maps, is based on satellite imagery, aerial photography and GPS signals. However, satellite imagery, aerial photography, and GPS don’t cover the inside of buildings, which means that you need a different service for mapping your venue and facilitating digital navigation indoors. That’s what MapsPeople does.
If you want your users to be able to locate themselves real-time inside your building, you need to combine your mapping and navigation service with an indoor positioning system, like BLE Beacons, WiFi-positioning, or magnetic fields. MapsIndoors can be interfaced with the most suitable indoor positioning system at your venue and we can always advise you on which indoor positioning method will offer you the best indoor positioning accuracy.
Guiding you between buildings
It’s nothing new that users can use Google Maps outdoors and an indoor navigation provider indoors. So what’s unique about our solution?
With MapsIndoors, the transition between outdoors and indoors is seamless. Seamless indoor-outdoor navigation means that navigation inside and between buildings is possible without changing app or browser tab. All the known functionality and design of Google Maps is brought inside and the user can get directions from any point outside the venue and all the way inside.
This is particularly useful in a variety of scenarios: Some industries have indoor spaces spread out over a large campus area, as we know it from universities, large corporations and hospitals. On these campuses, people need wayfinding tools not just inside, but when they move between buildings as well. This is the case for City, University of London, which covers 5 different campus sites in London and Aalborg University that consists of six campuses in three different cities. Freshman students and new employees need a tool to help them navigate inside and between buildings and campus areas, which is ensured with MapsIndoors.
In other cases, seamless transition is useful simply for being very convenient. Indoor-outdoor navigation means that users can be guided directly from their front step at home all the way to a specific point of interest inside your venue, eg. a specific stand at a convention or a free desk in an office.
Want to know more about the possibilities of indoor navigation? Read more about MapsIndoors or reach out - we’d love to hear from you.
July 30, 2019
