Indoors vs outdoors #
Situm is an universal geolocation engine. This means that it works both in indoor and outdoor spaces, anywhere in the world, always providing the best possible position. More specifically, Situm is able to provide different levels of geolocation granularity.
| Positioning type | Environment type | How does it work? | Location features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indoor Positioning | Calibrated venues | Situm computes the smartphone geolocation using information from its inertial sensors, WiFi, BLE, etc. If the venue has indoor and outdoor areas, Situm is able to fuse GPS information as well. | Situm provides the: 1. An absolute position (latitude-longitude in EPSG3857:WSG84). 2. A relative position associated with the environment: building identifier, floor identifier, X-Y coordinates (in meters from the bottom-left corner of the floor’s floorplan). 3. The orientation of the device around its 3 axis: bearing, pitch and roll. |
| Outdoor Positioning | Uncalibrated environments, anywhere in the world. | Situm provides location information based on the one given by the device’s location provider, be it GPS, Apple Location, Google, etc. | Situm only provides an absolute position in EPSG3857:WSG84 (latitude, longitude). |
The following figure illustrates this concept, where the floorplan of the building is delimited by the dotted perimeter. We have calibrated the green area, and left the red area uncalibrated. In this environment, Situm will produce Indoor Positioning within the green area and Outdoor Positioning within the red area and beyond.
a) Indoor
b) Outdoor
Similarly, we can define Indoor Routes and Outdoor Routes (remember that wayfinding routes can only be created within the canvas):
- Indoor Routes are those whose start and end an Indoor Positions.
- Outdoor Routes are those whose start and end an Outdoor Positions.
- Indoor-Outdoor Routes are those whose start is an Indoor Position and whose end is an Outdoor Position.
- Outdoor-Indoor Routes are those whose start is an Outdoor Position and whose end is an Indoor Position.
Situm provides Indoor Routes, and can be combined with outdoor navigation providers (e.g. Google Maps) to provide the rest (Outdoor, Indoor-Outdoor, Outdoor-Indoor).