A BIM and AR-based indoor navigation system for pedestrians on smartphones

Indoor navigation technology, as an emerging location information service, has shown continuous growth in its application demand in recent years. In indoor navigation, indoor localization and path planning are the key factors affecting navigation quality. Most of the existing methods rely on traditional methods for indoor localization with high implementation costs. As for path planning, most methods lack the acquisition and use of semantic information, affecting navigation's practicality and intuitiveness. To alleviate the above problems, we propose a building information modeling (BIM) and augmented reality (AR)-based indoor navigation system for pedestrians that can be implemented on smartphones. Specifically, we first map a three-dimensional model space subdivided by a triangular prism to the two-dimensional plane in order to construct an indoor navigation network. Secondly, the information is analyzed using inertial navigation system technology to identify indoor positions. Then, we propose an indoor augmented reality navigation algorithm based on architectural and spatial information (IARA) algorithm for indoor path planning. Finally, we integrated the above technologies and built an indoor pedestrian navigation system based on BIM and AR technologies. Experiments in specific scenarios show that our system ensures navigation stability while obtaining results that are more relevant to the needs of pedestrians.