Towards automatic configuration of floorplans for Indoor Positioning System

Abstract

Indoor positioning technologies are subject to serious research in recent years. Starting from low level inertial sensor based, through radio, magnetic or vision based solutions, ending on multiple sensors based fusions. All of the methods mentioned above can be designed in a way that will allow to benefit from vectorized indoor maps. Furthermore in order to be valuable to the end user, output of indoor positioning method have to be presented in a graphical way. Most common is projection of location into indoor floorplan. Nowadays it is common that modern buildings are computer designed and therefore are equipped with precise architectural plans that are necessary to issue building permit and helpful during construction. On the other hand old buildings, that for some reason require renewed floor plans are surveyed and architectural plans are drawn. A wealth of details that are unnecessary from the positioning system point of view, prevent us from using such plans for indoor positioning applications. Indoor maps have to be simplified in order to reduce complexity. This can be achieved by manual or automatic modifications of architectural drawings or raster images of floor plans. This work presents system designed to setup and maintain indoor positioning in a building and novel semi-automatic method for construction of vectorized floor plan from raster images using door detection and flood fill algorithm.