Three Dimensional Indoor Location Tracking Viewer

Abstract

In this paper we develop an indoor location tracking system and its 3D tracking monitoring viewer, viz., 3D Navigation Viewer (3DNV). We focus on the integration of an indoor location tracking system with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), to facilitate a representation of the user’s spatial information in virtual indoor environments that is synchronized with the physical location environment. The developed indoor location tracking system employs beacons as active transmitters, and a listener as a passive receiver. The distance information calculated from the difference speeds of RF and Ultrasonic signals is exploited, to determine the user’s physical location. This is essential in supporting third parties like doctors and caregivers in identifying the activities and status of a particular individual via 3DNV. 3DNV serves as a unified user interface for an indoor location tracking system, showing the viewpoint and position of the target in virtual indoor environments. It was implemented using VRML, to provide an actual real time visualization of the target’s spatial information.