Beacons for Indoor Positioning

This work aims to develop a system for the tracking and control of elderly or handicapped people in an indoor environment. We have developed both a special box using an Arduino board, and a mobile application on Android to determine the location of the target based on the Bluetooth Low Energy signals transmitted by special Beacons which are placed in the area of interest. Both systems are used to determine the position of the person and to monitor any event that would cause an alert. Those events can be a long stay in a fixed position, or the entry into pre-defined forbidden zones. The location data will be stored in a database for further processing. Alerts can trigger messages to be sent to local authorities and/or relatives of the people. Measurements and test results are discussed regarding their performance. It is clear that more research and development is necessary for obtaining reliable products.