A generic space definition framework to support seamless indoor/outdoor navigation systems

Abstract

AbstractContemporary public buildings are becoming conglomerates of open, semi‐open and closed spaces, with indoor, outdoor and underground sections. For humans and robots to navigate seamlessly through such environments, new flexible approaches need to be developed. Navigation systems generally rely on a network (nodes and edges) as an abstraction of underlying space availability. However, indoor and outdoor networks have different origins. While indoor systems rely on indoor space subdivision approaches, current outdoor systems utilize road‐based network approaches. Linking such networks via particular nodes is possible but restrictive. Many spaces in the built environment are not strictly indoor or outdoor spaces and are thus often omitted from navigation networks, further limiting navigation options. To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce a new space definition framework in which the entire built environment is categorized into indoor, outdoor, semi‐indoor and semi‐outdoor spaces. We provide strict definitions for the four space categories. Our framework allows the same navigation network extraction approaches to be used and therefore enables seamless indoor/outdoor path computation for single or combinations of locomotion modes. The notions of semi‐indoor and semi‐outdoor spaces offer new options for further tailoring of the navigation path with respect to environmental factors, which we demonstrate with two use cases.