uNavi : Implementation and Deployment of a Place-Based Pedestrian Navigation System

The key issue in achieving a pedestrian navigation service is to grasp the spatial context of pedestrians, which is mainly characterized by the places of their interest. We have developed a pedestrian navigation system uNavi, based on our proposed infrastructure that is capable of associating information services to the places of human interest. This paper focuses on the implementation and deployment of the system. Our current implementation realizes a detailed and timely navigation, by presenting landmark-based instruction of guidance using the spatial semantics stored locally. In addition, thanks to the feature of flexible definition of places achieved by our infrastructure, uNavi has a potential to assist the mobility of the disabled. Through the case studies of several large-scale deployments, the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach is discussed in this paper.