Real-Time Visualization of the Degree of Indoor Congestion with Smartphone-Based Participatory Sensing

Real-time visualization of the degree of indoor congestion is very useful to improve users’ experience in public spaces such as an event space or a shopping mall by helping users to identify crowded places to avoid congestion. However, it is difficult to develop a low-cost congestion visualization system. We designed a low-cost system for real-time visualization of indoor congestion degree with smartphone-based participatory sensing. The system is cost-effective, using Wi-Fi access point fingerprint-based indoor localization and Bluetooth-based congestion sensing with smartphone-based participatory sensing. In this paper, we develop a prototype of the proposed system. Moreover, we evaluate the prototype system from two aspects: first, how low is the cost of the system for sensing; second, how close is the relationship between congestion and the number of Bluetooth devices. We experimented in two places and found that the proposed system is cost-effective and the number of Bluetooth devices does have a relationship with the degree of congestion.