This EAGER project sought to generate early knowledge for the museum field about the capabilities and limitations of an Indoor Positioning System to: 1) automate the collection of visitor movement data for museum research, and 2) enable location-aware applications designed to support museum visitor learning. Working with Qualcomm, Inc., the Exploratorium installed and experimented with an early prototype of a whole-museum, WiFi-based IPS that acquired and processed timestamped location data (latitude/longitude) from mobile test devices, similar to cell phones. The project 1) defined IPS ground-truth testing protocols for three levels of location resolution: gallery (dozen or more meters), cluster (several meters), and exhibit (one meter or less); 2) tested the reliability of the prototype IPS to collect visitor movement data at all three location resolutions; 3) prototyped and evaluated a location-aware mobile application that allowed visitors to listen to and record “crowd-sourced” comments within a gallery; and, 4) developed and made public tools to assist in the analysis of timestamped latitude/longitude data, which can be adapted to accommodate other types of positioning systems beyond this project’s prototype WiFi-based IPS.
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William Meyer
Co-Principal Investigator
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Douglas Thistlewolf
Contributor
Citation
Funders
NSF
Funding Program:
EAGER
Award Number:
1346664
Funding Amount:
296772
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