App's glowing arrows guide you around a new building

WHETHER it's a cavernous department store or a rabbit warren of offices, finding your way around an unfamiliar building can be a struggle. But now an augmented reality app can point you in the right direction.

Developed by Jaewoo Chung at MIT's Media Lab, Guiding Light consists of a wearable badge with magnetic sensors and a software app that makes use of a projector built into many Samsung smartphones to cast arrows onto the ground in front of you as you walk.

The system relies on a map of the building based on fluctuations in its magnetic field, created by the presence of steel in the walls, floor and ceiling. In tests, Guiding Light was able to determine a user's position to within a metre.

To create the map, someone walks through a building wearing a badge that contains four magnetic sensors, which record changes in the magnetic field at each point in the building. The map is then loaded onto a phone. To navigate around the building, the user must wear a similar badge that "talks" to the map on the phone, confirming the user's position.

If the user wants to reach a specific location, they can key it into the app and Guiding Light will project an arrow onto the floor ahead. Like a compass, the arrow changes direction as the sensors in the badge shift in orientation. The projection can also give extra information: if you point your phone at an office door, say, the phone's accelerometer detects the change and the projection tells you the name, photo and job title of the occupant (see video: newscientist.com/article/dn21419).

Several technology companies have recently unveiled indoor positioning systems (IPS) that work with mobile phones - but these rely on nearby Wi-Fi nodes or Bluetooth sensors embedded in walls throughout a building to locate the user. Chung says his system is cheaper and easier to use, because all that is needed is a badge. What's more, he says, other systems require the user to stare at maps on their phones to see where they are headed, whereas Guiding Light does not. "We wanted people's eyes to be on their environment."

Professor Babak Parviz at the University of Washington in Seattle, who has worked on an augmented reality contact lens, says the system is a "creative" app. "If someday the [sensors] can be integrated into the phone for indoor navigation it becomes even more compelling," he says.

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