Audio Transcript: #CSUN14 Audio: Indoor Navigation using iBeacons
Below is a transcript of #CSUN14 Audio: Indoor Navigation using iBeacons. We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.
iBeacons are one of the new methods for conveying information to consumers especially while indoors, and Apple's recent support for the technology has helped to expand their usage over the past year. Gordon Fuller, CEO of Accessible Help, talks about his vision for the future of indoor navigation and what his company is doing to see it through in this podcast. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Direct from San Diego, it’s BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J.: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with Gordon Fuller, who is the CEO of a company called Accessible Help. Gordon, welcome to Blind Bargains.
GF: Well, thank you so much, J.J. I sure appreciate what you’ve been doing. Aloha.
J.J.: Absolutely, aloha. Go ahead and tell us exactly what is Accessible Help?
GF: We’re here at CSUN because we believe that accessibility can be built in at every level in our society, and one of the things we notice most is that in the United States and other countries, there is a great deal of accessibility, a lot of barrier removal, and that’s great, but basically one of the things that doesn’t exist is information about those accessibility accommodations.
And now, when we consider the Internet of Things, the idea that the people, places, and objects we encounter in the world around us could be associated with the information, knowledge, or actions that we want in those things when we encounter them, we have a whole new way of browsing, which means essentially by moving around in society, using our smart phones, we’re able to connect with the knowledge and the information that wants to find its way to us, and we can use that to guide us. So we see a whole new universe unveiling, and we’re here to look for new technology and partners and organizations that we can help and that can help us in this good effort.
J.J.: All right, so big download, but you’re talking especially about navigation and providing information to people while they’re traveling?
GF: Yes indeed. One of the things that’s most difficult about the accessibility that we feel really is responsible, perhaps in part, for the high rate of unemployment for people with disabilities, is indeed the cultural bias that people with disabilities seem to face outside of the fact that people are accommodating us. One of the reasons for that is it’s a difficult thing for people when they travel to be sure about the facilities in which they’re traveling, and if they have needs such as accessible restrooms, elevators, ramps, blind wayfinding navigation points to help them on their way, if you can’t be sure that those things are there, people may not feel like they can travel safely, successfully, or enjoyably.
So we think that labeling the accessible amenities and then putting those in a form in the cloud where people can find them will give us a whole new way of finding the information we need about the places that we want to go, and give us a way, once we’re there, to look around us and find what’s there.
J.J.: So this has been a growing trend, and there’s been different companies with different kind of approaches to this whole indoor navigation problem, I guess, for lack of a better word. What is your approach and how would you provide – say like a large hotel like this, like the Manchester, how would you provide information to people as they’re walking around?
GF: A great example – this is in fact, from what I understand, one of the flagship Hyatt Hotels, and it’s just cavernous and enormous. My friend Joe Cioffi with ClickAndGo WayFinding Maps, he said he’s talked to the conference organizer several times about making it more accessible for the blind, and they feel that it would convey an unfair advantage.
We all struggle a little bit finding our way around here, so the truth is, Joe’s system, together with the what are called iBeacons, a new technology introduced by Apple just earlier last year, in the fall, and with iBeacons, people are able to get precise information on objects and places around them – basically a tiny transmitter called Bluetooth LE, low energy. From as far as 50 feet away, you’ll be able to get information, ranging information, so as you get closer, the information can change. Rather like systems in the past like talking signs, you can label things; you can use that directionally, triangulating, and getting precise information, sensing essentially the environment around you, and then finding those labels, like front desk, elevators, dining rooms, cashiers, telephones, all that sort of thing. Taxis, bus stops.
J.J.: So Apple obviously has the iBeacon technology; what would be your role in helping to develop this? Because obviously anybody can go out really and buy these iBeacons now, correct?
GF: Great question. Yeah, there’s about 10, 12 companies, more every day. The beacons are becoming ever less expensive, and I’ve heard of them costing no more than $5. They’re between $50 and $5. With these little lick ’em stick ’em accessibility labels, you can paste those onto things, and with those, people will then be able to put the information they want associated with that individual beacon. They act like little tiny lighthouses; they’re tiny little transmitters. They don’t use a lot of power, they don’t cost very much, but with it, when you put them together, you kind of have a network.
So if I’m standing here in the lobby and I can see the lobby beacons, then I know that the ATM beacon is outside the door. Even though I can’t see it with my device, the fact that my device is pulling the internet and pulling down the data from the beacon presenting itself to me, I’m then able to reference that beacon and find the others.
J.J.: Okay. As far as accessible help is concerned, what is your role in helping bring all this together?
GF: I’m the CEO of the company. Basically, Apple put this system together; a lot of companies have jumped on it. As I said, there are a number of people making them. But the truth is, no one’s really thought of how to use it in a beneficial, humanitarian way. I think accessibility is one of those things that’s underserved, and I believe these beacons will make a huge difference in that respect.
J.J.: So would you offer a set of beacons to a hotel like this and then include guidance on how to program them for accessibility as part of your service?
GF: We recognized from the beginning that the accessibility needed to be baked in. You can’t just paste it on, like we see with a lot of IT products. You have to really start from the scratch, and when you make the entire hosting system and merchant-based kinds of systems and consumer applications, it has to be accessible from the start. So we’ve designed a ground-up system that’ll be able to host the kind of merchant information and easily give them the ability to label that information in ways that make a lot of sense. So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve created the entire architecture and system platform.
J.J.: So would users download an app to obtain that information, or how would they access that?
GF: Users can use a free app. We’ll have a free app from us, from Accessible Help, from the iTunes Store, or from the Android store, and then they’ll be able to load that, install it on their system. With that, you’ll be able, wherever you go, to get accessibility information. You opt into it. You can get other information as well; those same beacons can be used to promote the sale at the coffee shop or something as well, which is very standard use. But that’s it. The dual use of it makes it very affordable. And the fact that if you do put it in to help as an accessibility accommodation, you’re entitled to a federal tax credit of up to 50% of the cost.
J.J.: That’s very interesting, especially for companies who might be looking how to subsidize this.
GF: Yes.
J.J.: As far as for people who are maybe newer to the iBeacons, if you have different iBeacons from the different companies, are they interoperable, or is every system separate as far as how the information is controlled?
GF: If you’re familiar with the QR codes, it’s very similar to QR codes. You essentially have a registry, so each beacon has a unique identifier code to it.
J.J.: It may or may not be on your system, right?
GF: Exactly, exactly. Generally speaking, people who make the apps tend to make them very much for their beacons, so Macy’s would have their own beacons and so on. It’s become clear that it would be difficult for small businesses to have beacons and their own app, but we’ve kind of solved that problem, because we’ve partnered with another company which is offering a discount loyalty program which is open – that means you can go to Sears or Costco or Shell or the food store – and any of your purchases can be creating a 5% discount that then you can contribute to the charity of your choice. We believe people will choose to support charities that they care about, and for those of us that require accessible accommodations, we could choose to give a bit to making sure that other facilities, where there isn’t an economic incentive – schools, public infrastructure – could also be underwritten.
J.J.: When your app sees the beacon, is it able to judge – you said power up to 50 feet – is it able to judge by the amount of power the distance between the beacon and where you’re currently standing? Or do you just know it’s nearby?
GF: It can. Actually, when you configure the beacons, which essentially you can do remotely from the web, through the cloud, you’re able to set the range on the beacon. So you could have it at 1 foot or 50. It’s sort of your option. So the power of the beacon is adjusted accordingly, and also the content that’s triggered when you encounter the beacon can be also set in various ranges.
J.J.: Right. But can the app, though, can it see how far a beacon is from where you’re standing?
GF: Yes, it can. It can sense how far away it is, roughly, but you can only get a precise –
J.J.: Well, of course, yeah.
GF: You can get centimeter accuracy if you have three or more beacons.
J.J.: Right, because then you can triangulate. But to set up a whole – for instance, this exhibit hall, if you were to set up the whole thing with beacons, that’s quite a few.
GF: Well, it would be. I think we’ve calculated that you would have a beacon probably in the exhibit hall – it looks like it’s about 20,000 square feet – it would probably require about 50 beacons, and so that would be, at $10, $50 each…
J.J.: That’s not as bad as it seems.
GF: No, it’s pretty reasonable, really.
J.J.: And this is a pretty large exhibit hall. You have probably a couple hundred booths here.
GF: And in my past work, I worked in virtual reality; I created some of the first 3D virtual reality online social networks, and so I’ve been interested in augmented reality. The next step, of course, is wearable computers, and we could use LIDAR to go in and shoot a grid mesh of that room, and all the exhibits, for that matter, and with that, as you walk into the room, now everything that’s in the room has been precisely triangulated, its positions calculated, and entire three-dimensional models existing, so now we could actually guide you precisely to any point in the exhibit hall, right up to a stack of jeans on a counter with the sale price and the size you want.
J.J.: For a company or a hotel or somebody that wanted to perhaps set up with your beacons, outside of the cost of the beacons themselves, what’s the cost to be hosted on your cloud platform?
GF: We have a monthly service charge. We’re kind of in the process of determining that at this time. The beacons have a price each. We’ve designed it to be pretty near just as inexpensive as possible, and the reason for that is, like I always like to explain, this is a charming cloak on a selfish motive. I’ve been working on this system for years because I’m a blind person, and I need it myself to find my way around. So the trick has been “How can I get other people to pay for it?”
J.J.: So what are you thinking for the monthly?
GF: Probably about $35 a month per merchant. And remember, that can come out of the tax credit, so you would only have to – well, it depends on the system. We’re trying to create it in kind of an en masse kind of way, so that the merchants all come together instead of buying it individually. It would be through this kind of loyalty program, so anyone joining the loyalty program would then be able to buy the beacons and put them in place.
J.J.: Is there anywhere where you have this working as a live demo?
GF: Yes, we have it here in L.A. We’re working on several places, a resort, hotel, and we’re working, we hope, with Joe Cioffi going forward. Joe has a complete system, not just the waypoints and the accessible signage, but Joe also has full-on path navigation. As a mobility instructor, he’s really adept at that, so he’s been quite assistive.
J.J.: Definitely. We’ve covered that before on Blind Bargains, absolutely.
GF: Yeah, he’s great. He’s really great.
J.J.: If people want to get more information and find out more about this, is the app available yet?
GF: The app is about to be available. We’re going to launch in April, and if you go to accessiblehelp.com or accessiblehelp.org, get information about our organization, about the app, you’ll be able to get it in the Apple iTunes Store initially. We’ll be on Android shortly after that. But in the store, you’ll look for “Accessible Help.” And you can also get our tweets right now @accessiblehi.
J.J.: Awesome, man. Android is going to also depend on the phone. I believe certain ones have support for…
GF: Presently, all the smart phones in the last two years, really, have the Bluetooth for LE radio. We have about five radios [inaudible 00:13:42], and this little radio is in there. You use it for Bluetooth headsets and all that. This is a rather low energy embodiment of it supported by the operating system. At this time, only Apple and Android do support the beacons. Microsoft’s working on it. Even Blackberry apparently has support.
J.J.: More apps to come, I guess.
GF: More apps to come.
J.J.: Hey, thank you so much, Gordon, for sharing this with us.
GF: Hey, thank you, J.J. This has just been great. And keep those bargains coming. We sure appreciate what you’re doing.
J.J.: Thank you.
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