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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique for measuring speed and distance in indoor environments, which could be used to improve navigation technologies for robots, drones -- or pedestrians trying to find their way around an airport. The technique uses a novel combination of Wi-Fi signals and accelerometer technology to track devices in near-real time.

"We call our approach Wi-Fi-assisted Inertial Odometry (WIO)," says Raghav Venkatnarayan, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "WIO uses Wi-Fi as a velocity sensor to accurately track how far something has moved. Think of it as sonar, but using radio waves, rather than sound waves."

"We created WIO to work in conjunction with a device's IMU^*, correcting any errors and improving the accuracy of speed and distance calculations," says Muhammad Shahzad, co-corresponding author of the paper and an assistant professor of computer science at NC State. "This improvement in accuracy should also improve the calculations regarding a device's precise location in any indoor environment where there is a Wi-Fi signal."

[...] "We envision WIO as having applications in everything from indoor navigational tools to fitness tracking to interactive gaming," Venkatnarayan says.

"We are currently working with Sony to further improve WIO's accuracy, with an eye toward incorporating the software into off-the-shelf technologies," says Shahzad.

^*Inertial Measurement Units

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