An IoT Framework for Detecting Movement Within Indoor Environments

Tracking people indoors can be valuable in smart living scenarios such as tracking shoppers in a mall or in healthcare situations when tracking the movement of elderly patients can allow them to remain more independent. Determining accurate movement of people indoors is problematic however as there is no universal tracking system such as GPS which works indoors. Instead, a range of techniques are used based on technologies such as cameras, radio frequency identification, WiFi, Bluetooth, pressure pads and radar are used to track people and objects within indoor environments. The most common technologies for tracking are Bluetooth and WiFi. Many Internet of Things (IoT) devices support these protocols and can therefore act as beacons and hubs for movement detection indoor. We provide here an overview of an IoT focused framework which allows the plug and play of Bluetooth and WiFi devices in addition to integrating passive and active approaches to determining the movement of people indoors.