Situm's location technology is designed to locate people walking with their mobile on the hand. However, unlike most competitors, it is also to operate robustly against other modes of operation.
- Walking with the phone on the hand
This is the default and preferred mode of operation for wayfinding. As shown in the following figure, the user carries the smartphone in its hand, with the screen turned on and facing upwards. The smartphone is facing in the user's walking direction.
Results are optimal in this situation, usually achieving average accuracies of 1-3 meters. Unlike other location technologies, Situm is also robust against the following user actions:
- While standing still, the user is talking on the phone, typing, swinging the smartphone, etc. Situm is specifically built to detect those situations and distinghish them from the real user movement, enhancing the accuracy and robustnes.
- Wayfinding while the user moves the phone and changes its position and orientation. As long as the use keeps walking, Situm will be able to correct the deviations introduced by those actions. Sometimes, these actions may result in a momentary accuracy loss (5-20 seconds).
On smartphones that have a magnetometer sensor, it is important to take into account that Situm can not operate correctly if the user walks around with the phone in horizontal orientation (see next Figure). In this case, the smartphone's orientation with respect to the North does not match the user's orientation, reducing the accuracy of the positioning estimate. If the smartphone does not have a magnetometer, this issue does not exist.
- Walking with the phone on the pocket / backpack
Situm also works perfectly when the smartphone is not in the hand of the user, but in her pocket / backback / belt. In this case, the accuracy is 1-5 meter in average. This is a bit less than in the ideal case (smartphone in the users' hand), but nevertheless more than enough to enable tracking use cases: real time workforce monitoring, heatmaps, etc.
- Vehicle tracking
Situm is also able to track vehicles both indoors and outdoors. The average accuracy is usually 5-15 meters and the typical use case is forklift / AGV tracking in warehouses or industrial plants.
