Re: Marc Ciurana - ASCAMM indoor positioning

[Tomas Baronas]

Hi Marc,

I am very well thank you. Me and my group members are very excited to work! I apologize for not replying earlier, but your e-mail went into a wrong folder and I didn't see it until today. The e-mail address from which I am sending this to you makes it much easier for me to be reached. I have additionally cc'ed our group's google groups e-mail so we can carry out a conversation as if everyone was present and listening.

For the next steps, we have gathered and we are generating ideas and we are still waiting an e-mail from Ricard. We will contact you shortly with follow up questions and general proposals as well as what we hope to achieve for you and our school project so you are always in the loop.

With Regards,

Tomas Baronas

ESADE MIE Group 1 Member

tel: +34 655 22 17 18

e-mail: tomas....@esade.edu

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Marc Ciurana <mciu...@ascamm.com> wrote:

Hi Tomas,

how are you?

as we agreed yesterday at ASCAMM, I am sending this email to you so you have my contact. I think Ricard Jiménez from ASCAMM will send a "general" mail today and then we can detail the next steps to proceed. I hope that yesterday was interesting for you, from my side it was and I hope we can progress together and achieve useful things.  Thank you

Marc Ciurana

 

[Marc Ciurana]

Hi Tomas,

thanks for your mail. Let's wait the mail from Ricard and after that please tell me the questions and proposals you mention...

Best regards,

Marc

[Tomas Baronas]

Hey guys,

The following is a reply from ASCAMM to the questions I was telling you about the other day

I am going to ask them follow up questions and I will copy you guys along so that we all get to see the answers

Cheers,

Tomas

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marc Ciurana <mciu...@ascamm.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: Marc Ciurana - ASCAMM indoor positioning
To: Tomas Baronas <tomas.r...@gmail.com>
Cc: Rjimenez <rjim...@ascamm.com>, ps...@ascamm.com

Hi Tomas,

(Ricard and Pepa, I put you in copy so you are aware of our conversations in the indoor positioning topic)

I find those are interesting and key questions, I try to answer:

- The indoor positioning technology that we are talking about requires that the smartphone performs measurements over the WiFi signal received from the different WiFi routers installed in the environment. The problem is that neither Apple nor Microsoft allow to publish apps that obtain information about the WiFi network that the device would sense. We have had "official" conversations with Apple and Microsoft on that topic and they leave very clear that in that case you cannot publish the apps in the legal channels (for instance App Store in the case of Apple). They examine the code your app before publishing it in the official store. 

One alternative could be using "illegal" libraries that allow you to do the measurements (those libraries exist) but then you have the problems of (1) how do you distribute your app? (2) you must use jailbroken phones... problems that make this alternative difficult to be considered.

It seems that one company from Toulouse (Insiteo) has achieved an agreement with Apple in that sense, but it is only theoretical / commercial info that we have not validated:

http://www.insiteo.com/joomla/index.php/en/latest-news/148-insiteo-showcases-its-iphone-based-system-in-pau-airport

We are trying to achieve a multi-platform positioning platform researching on doing the measurements on the WiFi infrastructure (routers, access points) instead of the mobile devices. It has certain uncertainty but we believe that with money and resources we could succeed on that at middle term.

 

- We call it WiFi tag. We are working on a project about this and we have achieved a big prototype; now we are trying to find a company that is interested in the technology and that does the miniaturization of the technology towards a small tag. It is a little bit uncertain at that moment. That positioning technology has better characteristics with respect to the one used in the smartphones (for instance no need for site calibration, etc), that's why we do research on it.

On the other side, we could achieve a WiFi tag for positioning employing similar technology to the one we use for the smartphones. In that sense, we know the existence of some consumer off-the-shelf WiFi tags that would allow to implement this, and we consider exploring this path too.

 

- Our intention (and need) is that our team has capabilities for developing a fully commercial app, because in most of projects it is needed to wrap our positioning solution in a location based app & system so that it is interesting for the customer. However, frankly speaking, currently our team does not have this specific capability but we hope to retrieve it as soon as possible.

 

Please let me know it this answers your questions.

Thank you!

Marc

 

On 03.12.2012 20:44, Tomas Baronas wrote:

Hi Marc,

Since I haven't heard anything from Ricard in over a week, I will contact him directly and ask him on how to proceed. For now, we feel like we have most of the pieces of the puzzle so we can do the report for our class.

Nevertheless some follow up questions have come up:

-How viable, or rather, do you think at some point your technology will be able to be installed on an iOS phone, Windows Phone or Blackberry Phone? Can you maybe provide a brief overview of the workaround and an explanation why the technology does not work on these phone systems?

-How far along is the development of the individual standalone device (ie. the non-phone application) and have you explored using an off-the-shelf solution?

-How advanced is your team in developing an App? Are they just good enough to get a prototype or do you feel they can produce a commercially viable product with a beautiful and professional user interface?

Thanks again,

Tomas Baronas

ESADE MIE Group 1 Member

tel: +34 655 22 17 18

e-mail: tomas....@esade.edu

[Tomas Baronas]

Hi Marc,

Apologies for not maintaining contact during this whole time. We were busy finishing with final reports and exams. 

From the information that you provided us as well as from the first meeting with you, we have produced the following report.

Now we know that there will be parts were you will have to correct us and we perhaps made a few assumptions, but nevertheless we found at least two interesting opportunities for Indoor GPS that we think could be interesting. We were also following the format that was given to us by the class, so I think you can skip a few sections and go directly down to the Directions and Business Opportunities Sections.

Let us know your thoughts and perhaps we can discuss the report's findings further.

Sincerely,

Tomas Baronas

MIE Group 1 Member

e-mail: tomas....@alumni.esade.edu

tel: +34 655 22 17 18

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Marc Ciurana <mciu...@ascamm.com> wrote:

Hi Tomas,

(Ricard and Pepa, I put you in copy so you are aware of our conversations in the indoor positioning topic)

I find those are interesting and key questions, I try to answer:

- The indoor positioning technology that we are talking about requires that the smartphone performs measurements over the WiFi signal received from the different WiFi routers installed in the environment. The problem is that neither Apple nor Microsoft allow to publish apps that obtain information about the WiFi network that the device would sense. We have had "official" conversations with Apple and Microsoft on that topic and they leave very clear that in that case you cannot publish the apps in the legal channels (for instance App Store in the case of Apple). They examine the code your app before publishing it in the official store. 

One alternative could be using "illegal" libraries that allow you to do the measurements (those libraries exist) but then you have the problems of (1) how do you distribute your app? (2) you must use jailbroken phones... problems that make this alternative difficult to be considered.

It seems that one company from Toulouse (Insiteo) has achieved an agreement with Apple in that sense, but it is only theoretical / commercial info that we have not validated:

http://www.insiteo.com/joomla/index.php/en/latest-news/148-insiteo-showcases-its-iphone-based-system-in-pau-airport

We are trying to achieve a multi-platform positioning platform researching on doing the measurements on the WiFi infrastructure (routers, access points) instead of the mobile devices. It has certain uncertainty but we believe that with money and resources we could succeed on that at middle term.

 

- We call it WiFi tag. We are working on a project about this and we have achieved a big prototype; now we are trying to find a company that is interested in the technology and that does the miniaturization of the technology towards a small tag. It is a little bit uncertain at that moment. That positioning technology has better characteristics with respect to the one used in the smartphones (for instance no need for site calibration, etc), that's why we do research on it.

On the other side, we could achieve a WiFi tag for positioning employing similar technology to the one we use for the smartphones. In that sense, we know the existence of some consumer off-the-shelf WiFi tags that would allow to implement this, and we consider exploring this path too.

 

- Our intention (and need) is that our team has capabilities for developing a fully commercial app, because in most of projects it is needed to wrap our positioning solution in a location based app & system so that it is interesting for the customer. However, frankly speaking, currently our team does not have this specific capability but we hope to retrieve it as soon as possible.

 

Please let me know it this answers your questions.

Thank you!

Marc

 

On 03.12.2012 20:44, Tomas Baronas wrote:

Hi Marc,

Since I haven't heard anything from Ricard in over a week, I will contact him directly and ask him on how to proceed. For now, we feel like we have most of the pieces of the puzzle so we can do the report for our class.

Nevertheless some follow up questions have come up:

-How viable, or rather, do you think at some point your technology will be able to be installed on an iOS phone, Windows Phone or Blackberry Phone? Can you maybe provide a brief overview of the workaround and an explanation why the technology does not work on these phone systems?

-How far along is the development of the individual standalone device (ie. the non-phone application) and have you explored using an off-the-shelf solution?

-How advanced is your team in developing an App? Are they just good enough to get a prototype or do you feel they can produce a commercially viable product with a beautiful and professional user interface?

Thanks again,

Tomas Baronas

ESADE MIE Group 1 Member

tel: +34 655 22 17 18

e-mail: tomas....@esade.edu

[Marc Ciurana]

Hi Tomas,

my apologies too for the delay. Thank you very much for the report, I will read it in detail and I will come back to you.

Best regards,

Marc