How to Develop Indoor Navigation Mobile Application?

Stay assured with newly introduced mobile indoor GPS navigation apps you are not certain to get lost in a mall again. These technologies are specially designed to help you navigate inside places traditional GPS-based mapping can’t.

With a smartphone in hand, it was pretty easy for users to find their way to their destination using outdoor GPS navigation mobile apps, even when they were in an unfamiliar city. However, it is possible to get lost indoors, with GPS satellite signals not being accurately traceable in the case of navigation apps.

As business owners decided to create indoor navigation apps for the ease of the users GPS navigation apps have seen a different demand. It would take you to places where technology loses precision or isn’t available at all. So how often did you have a hard time locating that new cafe inside a crowded shopping center, where you were supposed to hang out with your friends or how often did you keep wandering here and there while looking for the meeting room of some office you just visited? Well, to be honest, in my case, it is often.

I have always thought about how convenient to have an app that works similarly to the ones used outdoors. With such an indoor navigation app, you would be good to go as it is going to be extremely easy to find a way to your destination, even in an unfamiliar location, place or city.

Indoor Positioning System

If you aren’t sure how to build indoor positioning system, then you’re surely reading the right article.
Coming back to the question, the easiest way to explain Indoor Position System (IPS) is that it works like a GPS for indoor settings. This is useful in locating people or objects inside buildings, usually via a mobile device, which can be a smartphone or tablet. Meanwhile, this technology is way newer and way more advanced than GPS, as services leveraging indoor navigation app development are rapidly gaining traction in locations like hospitals, airports, shopping malls, and other indoor locations where navigation and other location-based services (LBS) may prove to be indispensable.

How Are These Apps Useful to Businesses?

Well, indoor positioning app technology is greatly helpful for businesses as they can put this service to good use. Indoor positioning & navigation apps can be used by them to map out large buildings, such as malls, railways, and airports, for visitors. As offices, malls, hospitals, airports, warehouses, and university campuses, all of these buildings are built over a large area, it becomes challenging for visitors to find their way quickly.

However, now this problem can be solved with Indoor Positioning & Navigation apps. The idea behind this indoor navigation technology is simple: Inside large buildings – where GPS doesn’t work the app will help smartphone users locate and reach certain destinations.

These navigation platforms can benefit both visitors and facility owners, and they can be quickly adjusted based on each facility’s requirements. In this write-up, a lot will be discussed about this technology, like how to create indoor navigation app, as well as what it needs to create a mobile app and its nuances.

Market Statistics for Indoor Positioning Apps

As we talk about indoor location navigation, the revenue is expected to grow with a CAGR of 22.4% and reach a mark of $24 billion by the end of 2027 as compared to 2022.

What Information Do These Apps Show?

Showing their current positions to the visitors on the map, the indoor navigation app creates the shortest route to a destination. Moreover, it allows users to receive messages from system administrators. Augmented Reality technology and beacons are used by indoor navigation system developers to create comprehensive indoor maps. These navigation maps majorly have three purposes, Positioning, Navigation & Push Notifications.

• Positioning: It locates a place inside a building, for instance, a shopping center.
• Navigation: It creates the shortest route possible to the preferred destination, such as from car parking to a shoe brand store.
• Push Notifications: It sends the necessary messages to a user’s smartphone.

Well, in the simplest terms, the information of the indoor tracking app is easily shared and worked on. These apps have become a necessity for the places that are built over a large area and have various aspects overall.

Read Also: Cell Phone Tracker App Development Cost & Key Features

Why Do the Visitors like Indoor Navigation Apps?

The indoor GPS app enables visitors to reach their chosen destination, simply by using their smartphones, which is just great. It is more about saving time and energy. When you decide to move forward with the indoor navigation app project all you need to do is take care of the key aspects of the aspect. The major factors to consider are:

• Get an online mapping of a building
• Search for destinations
• Create & View routes
• Get voice directions to the preferred destination and back

The first thing that strikes your mind when you see any such app is how to create indoor navigation maps that are easy to use and can help your customers leverage the power of technology for a better experience.

Why do Facility Owners & Businesses like Indoor Navigation Apps?

Indoor navigation software is quite popular among business and facility owners. These apps make so many things easier for them and their potential clients. Some of the benefits that they get are:

• Collect data on users’ favorite places, number of visitors, time spent, etc.
• Send notifications
• Link app to product and trigger actions, like sending a notification to the user about the location of the product which is added to their wishlist, once they reach the physical store.

The indoor navigation app not only makes things easier for the customers but helps business owners gather some important information and work on excelling their apps.

How do Indoor Navigation Apps work?

Well, what the augmented reality indoor navigation technology does is that it leverages internal sensors in your smartphone to calculate the indoor position of the device using a complex mathematical algorithm. It then combines the incoming data from these sensors astutely, to calculate a very accurate position, leaving scope for little to no latency. This way it results in a smooth user experience.

To offer the best user experience – which is both fast and accurate indoor mapping and navigation technology relies on three different elements, such as underlying dynamic indoor positioning system platform, beacons broadcasting signals that are picked up by smartphone and then served to the positioning system. The technology in the indoor navigation system project combines data from various sources to calculate the position of a user.

The input data comprises:

• Information from smartphone sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope)
• Signals from a transmitter (Wi-Fi access points, beacons)
• Facility maps (information about walls, obstacles, elevators, and staircases is essential)

So this way an Indoor Navigation System requires:

• A facility (building) map
• A smartphone with a dedicated app
• Fingerprinting and BLE Beacons (it guides a user through the building)
• Back-end servers’ indoor navigation calculation is an intensive process

Related Blog: Indoor Positioning Mobile App Development for Retail Stores

If you are still thinking about how to make indoor navigation app, simply reach to the mobile app developers and let them get into action. They would deliver you a solution that would simplify things for your users and visitors.

What Hardware is Required by Indoor Navigation Apps?

When looking for Android indoor navigation application services you need to understand that a lot goes into the development of these apps. Yes, even an indoor navigation system requires hardware, and these are categorized into three main types to ensure accuracy, these approaches should be mixed with another.

Wi-Fi Access Points

These access points serve as signal transmitters. However, they don’t calculate user position, instead, your smartphone does that and this ends up eating the battery life.

BLE Beacons

These BLE Beacons have long battery life and a 2-to-3 meter range accuracy. These signals are supported by both Android and iOS devices. Besides, the BLE beacons-based indoor navigation iOS and Android calculates the route on the server and thus it eliminates the extra load on a user device. Though for that a user is required to be within the range of at least three BLE beacons. This method is termed as a triangulation method. The requirement for the number of beacons depends on the number of obstacles, i.e. walls. With Indoor Beacon Calculator, the app can determine how many beacons will be needed.

Related Blog: iBeacon Technology for Businesses?

Geofencing

This feature uses a smartphone’s built-in compass as well as a geomagnetic map of the venue. Meanwhile, the magnetic field needs to be stable. With every new source of electromagnetic emission, the product owner will need to update a geomagnetic map.

Building a navigation app requires a lot of software and hardware. One needs to be very sure of how things work and what best technology to use.
It is important your indoor navigation app is ladened with features and can help you earn better results in less time.

What Features Does an Indoor Navigation App Comprise Of?

When working on an AR indoor navigation app one must consider all the aspects of the tasks easily. Features can easily make your app look better and stronger. Due to its complex functioning, the app will require a lot of features, however, the basic features are discussed:

• Positioning: It determines a user’s location
• Mapping: It shows all the locations & possible routes
• Routing: It creates the best route and guides the visitor to the point of destination
• Analytics: It shows the number of visitors and user behavior inside the building
• Administrative capability: Enable building managers to maintain beacons, set up promotional campaigns, and do a lot more.

When you consider hiring Android app developers or iOS app developers for your shopping mall indoor navigation app, these are some basic points that you need to consider. If you want to earn a stronger space in the market you need to include some additional features that would make your app more engaging and interesting for you.

Also, Read: How to Develop an Audio Tour Guide App like Audio Compass?

Additional Features

The indoor map navigation is meant to make things easier for the users. These additional features extend a helping hand to the business owners too to collect data and make things easier.

• Log in via a Facebook account
• 3D map visualization
• Voice guidance
• Find-a-friend
• Custom design

When working with the Android indoor navigation app, you need to make sure that the features are added to make it easier for the users to reach their destination without any troubles.

How Augmented Reality Indoor Navigation Apps Are Changing the Way We Travel?

When talking about an AR indoor navigation app, the first thing to consider is understanding how AR can make things easier more than visually interesting. The technology lets you add layers of information about the real world and generate experiences that use relevant knowledge about the user’s environment in real-time.

When you reach out to the developers for a technically sound and interesting AR indoor position app they will let your users enjoy and trace their destination. Although AR has given some great solutions, indoor navigation is something that is making the best of the technology to provide world-class user experience.

How Can Indoor Navigation Apps with Wayfinding Beacons Prove to Be Useful?

Now you know that indoor GPS can be used for navigation, you can surely hire a team of developers to build your indoor navigation Android.  Despite which type of facility it is, be it an airport, museum, factory, university, shopping mall, warehouse, office building, or corporate campus, your visitors, and employees can greatly benefit from this kind of app as they will be able to easily find their way around. But it is not the only thing that an indoor navigation app is useful for. There are many other uses of Indoor Navigation as well, which comprise of:

• Location Sharing: It can be used by both employees and visitors to find one another and can designate a meeting spot.
• Advertising: The wayfinding beacons can detect a customer nearby, so you can call their attention to your services or products in the area by sending a message or alert to their mobile device.
• Location-Based Coupons: Businesses can send a coupon or special offer alert to the visitor’s mobile device based on their location. Like, if a person is standing next to the apparel section, then they can be sent a coupon for 25% off on all apparel. This is a significant way to personalize your customers’ shopping experience.
• In-App Search: If an employee or visitor is searching for a particular place or product, they are looking for it in the mall navigation app and it will show them detailed directions to that spot.
• Inventory & Asset Tracking: It is easy to keep track of machinery, merchandise, vehicles, and other assets with the use of an indoor navigation app.

Sectors that can benefit from Indoor Navigation Apps

• Retail Sectors: Imagine a supermarket that has an indoor navigation system and would help you reach the right set of things at the right time. Our indoor navigation application development team makes it easier for customers in retail stores to arrange things easily.
• Hospitals: When in hospitals it becomes quite difficult to find the right doctor who would make things easier for you. Enter a hospital, and let the indoor navigation app help you find the orthopedic or the pediatrician, or the dentist at once without wandering around. In case of emergencies, it is a time-saving solution.
• Shopping Mall Navigation Apps: Enter a mall, wander around, and find the right shop without delay. We make sure that the solutions that are delivered to you are designed in a way that your experience becomes fun and comfortable.
• Museum: In museums, it becomes quite difficult for people to find the right place to visit and see what they are interested in.
• Railways: The railways need to have an indoor navigation system where they can guide you through the platforms which makes it easier for the passengers to find the right platform.
• Grocery Shopping: When it comes to shopping grocery, it is quite difficult to put things in the right manner.

Working with an indoor navigation app is quite a difficult task and one needs to make sure that things are interesting. Wayfinding applications are quite important and one needs to work on the details of the applications.

How Much Cost Required to Develop an Indoor Navigation App?

Well, indoor navigation apps android or iOS with basic features cost somewhere between $10,000 to 50,000, while optional features range from $20,000 to $50,000. As it comes to hardware, the average price for a three-piece kit of BLE Beacons is $20 to $60 each, while the price for geofencing varies as per your request. When you have got an Indoor Navigation app developed, you better expect to get it updated routinely.

A few services that you might need to pay for after development are:

• Third-Party Services: You will be required to pay for a subscription to a location engine as well as PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service solutions, like Map storage, so to reduce the maintenance cost.
• Servers: A server needs to be created by the product owners where all mapping information is stored. This will save time when a beacon’s battery dies and requires replacement. Then another server consists of information on marketing campaigns and BLE beacons useful for sending push notifications.
• Device Updates/Upgrades: Indoor navigation apps require updating each time beacons or smartphones are being updated. This way the app doesn’t experience glitches.

These are a few services that you would need to pay for when you decide to build an indoor navigation app. The indoor navigation app development cost of such apps is quite feasible and its concept ensures that you get the best results in no time.

Indoor Positioning Apps Providing Guidance & Data

This app is greatly helpful to visitors in finding their way inside large facilities, whereas, for businesses, the app offers analytics tools crucial to studying user behavior. Different technologies can be used by an indoor navigation system based on which technology best suits that provided type of facility. It seamlessly switches from one technology to another, as and when needed.

Hire a Team of Developers for Indoor App Development

When you decide to enter the market with an Augmented Reality powered indoor navigation app you simply need to hire a team of augmented reality solution providers who can help you enhance your business operations. Our team uses the technology of the future to make sure that the result that is delivered to you is decided in the right way and helps you earn more profits. Our techies are updated with the latest technology and ensure to delivery of highly scalable and flexible solutions that are futuristic and can beat the competition in the future too. With such applications, we make it a point that our clients get an edge over their competition and the products stand the test of time. It is easier to be prepared for the future than to change technology in a few years.

Also, Read: What is the future of augmented reality in mobile applications?

Over the years our mobile app developers have worked with various clients to deliver solutions that are tailored to suit particular businesses. With advanced and latest tech stack put to use we have been providing scalable and flexible solutions over the years.

Conclusion

By now you must be clear that this technology is immensely great in helping people find their way inside large complexes, like malls and airports, and besides that, it has many other benefits as well. So, if you are impressed with the Indoor Navigation system and want to get one for your business organization or building, then get in touch with an experienced and skilled Android and iOS app development company to help you with the process.

Frequently Asked Questions