Pierre Salmona

Description
MyVisit is a location-based guidance service for museums that is displayed on the Web and on end-users’ mobile phones. It bundles tourist media content (audio and video), a 3D model of museums (indoor and outdoor), and a location technology that is compatible with standard mobile phones and relies on a smart coupling between WiFi and GNSS pseudolites.
WiFi enables MyVisit to locate mobile phones by measuring the power received from neighbouring access points, converting such measurements into a distance, and performing a triangulation. This method necessitates prior measurement of the area of interest, providing the necessary data to fit propagation models of WiFi access points that depend significantly on the physical environment.
GNSS provides location data by measuring the propagation delay between the phone and several pseudolites acting as fixed terrestrial satellites. The advantage of pseudolites their use of a waveform that has been designed specifically for location, thereby ensuring high performance levels – particularly in terms of accuracy.

Innovation
The innovation lies in the overall architecture of the solution. This architecture relies on a smart coupling between WiFi and pseudolite signals. It uses a protocol to distribute accurate synchronisation information over a standard network, which minimises installation costs for museums. The architecture also innovates in the process used by the mobile application, which utilises GNSS signals transmitted by pseudolites.

Target market
The target market consists of museums and other touristic buildings. The business model relies on visitor payments, in the same way that visitors today pay for audio guides. The revenues will be shared with museums, enabling their directors to consider it as an investment in the location infrastructure and as an enabler of revenues.

Customer benefit
The benefits for visitors lie primarily in that they can use their own mobile phones instead of a dedicated terminal rented in the museum. They are familiar with their phones’ ergonomics, and using the service is actually a continuation of a phone’s navigation functions outside the museum. Visitors can also keep the cultural multimedia content, which is stored and made available on the Web after the visit.

Contact:
Pierre Salmona
LOCUS Sarl
23 bd Victor Hugo
Pépinière du Perget
31770 Colomiers
France
phone: +33 (0) 68 84 54 055
e-mail: psalmona@jp-geo.fr