Indoor-Navigation — Fraunhofer FOKUS is a Berlin-based research project developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) that focuses on creating advanced indoor positioning and navigation systems for complex public buildings, transport hubs, hospitals, and smart city environments. While satellite-based GPS works reliably outdoors, it fails inside buildings where signals are blocked by walls and ceilings. Fraunhofer FOKUS addresses this gap by developing indoor positioning technologies using a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, Wi-Fi fingerprinting, ultra-wideband (UWB) sensors, and inertial measurement units to achieve accurate indoor location tracking with precision of one to three metres. Applications span a wide range of urban scenarios: guiding passengers through complex railway stations and airports, helping patients and visitors navigate large hospital campuses, enabling warehouse and logistics optimisation, supporting emergency responders in locating people during building evacuations, and enhancing accessibility for visually impaired individuals through audio-guided navigation. The technology is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing building management systems and smart city platforms, providing indoor location data as a service that third-party applications can consume through standardised APIs. Privacy-preserving design principles ensure that individual tracking data is anonymised and that users maintain control over their location information. The project builds on Fraunhofer FOKUS's broader expertise in open smart city platforms and IoT middleware, positioning indoor navigation as a natural extension of urban digital infrastructure. Within Berlin's smart city ecosystem, the technology supports ambitions to create fully navigable, accessible, and intelligent urban environments. The project's outcomes contribute to European standardisation efforts for indoor positioning and inform the development of accessible urban design guidelines across Germany.
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