Project Summary
The project involves the implementation of indoor geolocation technology that enables passengers to track the location of the agent assigned to assist them, along with an estimated time of arrival. Ostrum tech plans to test the solution at one airport to determine its feasibility and gather feedback from passengers. This initiative aims to enhance the airport experience for passengers with disabilities or limited mobility.
Project Achievements
Our main challenge was to find a cost effective geolocation tech which will work indoor and outdoor. During the project, we studied the technical compatibility of various map/geolocation SDKs with our platform. We evaluated Mapbox, PointrLabs and Google. We integrated Google map, Streetview and geolocation to our platform to demonstrate the capability and to validate the concept with special assistance provider and passenger representative. The highlight of the project was the demo of this capability to a London airport, which contributed to securing the deal to deploy our special assistance platform there in August 2023.
Conclusions
Passenger rep confirmed that showing geolocation of agents will definitely reduce anxiety and provide reassurance for passengers. Based on the evaluation of various SDKs, we found that Google maps and SDK to be the most compatible with our platform. This tech will enable special assistance providers with better situational awareness, find nearest agent for tasks and for auditing agent’s activities. Another learning point is that this feature will become a selling point for our special assistance platform, when we try to sell it to future customers.
Next Steps
During this project, we have taken the geolocation idea from TRL2 to TRL6. The next steps are: 1. Integrate the solution to production environment and deploy it for future use by our customers (two London airports) 2. Offer this as an optional commercial service on top of our special assistance platform and see the level of interest. We are likely to seek funding extending this idea with augmented reality way finding or step free navigation, in the future.
