Crowdsourcing the Installation and Maintenance of Indoor Localization Infrastructure to Support Blind Navigation

Abstract

Indoor navigation systems can make unfamiliar buildings more accessible for people with vision impairments, but their adoption is hampered by the effort of installing infrastructure and maintaining it over time. Most solutions in this space require augmenting the environment with add-ons, such as Bluetooth beacons. Installing and calibrating such infrastructure requires time and expertise. Once installed, localization accuracy often degrades over time as batteries die, beacons go missing, or otherwise stop working. Even localization systems installed by experts can become unreliable weeks, months, or years after the installation. To address this problem, we created LuzDeploy: a physical crowdsourcing system that organizes non-experts for the installation and long-term maintenance of a Bluetooth-based navigation system. LuzDeploy simplifies the tasks required to install and maintain the localization infrastructure, thus making a crowdsourcing approach feasible for non-experts. We report on a field deployment where 127 participants installed and maintained a blind navigation system over several months in a 7-story building, completing 455 tasks in total. We compare the accuracy of the system installed by participants to an installation completed by experts with specialized equipment. LuzDeploy aims to improve the sustainability of indoor navigation systems to encourage widespread adoption outside of research settings.