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Game Changing Indoor Positioning Platform IndoorAtlas Raises $2.45 Million

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IndoorAtlas provides a unique cloud platform that offers geomagnetic positioning in its core (helps accurately pinpoint a location inside a building). IndoorAtlas has grown to over 60 people across the globe with 9 patents granted (and 26 more filed). The company today has 25,000 developers on its cloud platform and close to one million monthly active users.

Below is our interview with Dan Patton, Chief Commercial Officer at IndoorAtlas:

dan-patton

Q: What is IndoorAtlas? Could you tell us IndoorAtlas’ startup story?

A: IndoorAtlas was founded in early 2012, as the result of over a decade of academic research on computer science, signal processing, pattern recognition and robotics by a team of PhD professors and PhD students out of Oulu University, Finland.

This team discovered that each modern building has a unique magnetic fingerprint and by leveraging the magnetic sensor in a smartphone, our software was able to identify and track a person’s location inside a building. This ‘geomagnetic positioning’ was the disruptive, missing link to enable developers to deploy accurate indoor location-based apps at scale for a wide variety of use cases such as indoor shopping centers, airports, resorts, hospitals and more. We may have started out small just a few years ago but we have grown to over 60 people across the globe with 9 patents granted (and 26 more filed). Today we have 25,000 developers on our cloud platform and have close to one million monthly active users.

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IndoorAtlas offers greater scalability, accuracy and ease of deployment than any other indoor positioning platform on the market. Looking to the future, we want to make every mobile app in the world location-aware, in every building in the world. With the recent media blitz around Pokemon Go, people are beginning to realize the potential of location-based apps and games, and how they intersect with augmented reality and targeted advertising. Quite simply, we want to bring GPS indoors, and empower everyone to be able to discover the indoor world around them, wherever they are. The only way we can do this is to make our technology available to every app developer, no matter what size, market or interest. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. All of our tools are freely available. It is only when you reach a size where your app could be considered a commercially validated concept with a regular audience, that our pricing service becomes relevant to you.

Q: How does your geomagnetic technology work?

A: Over the course of millions of years, animals from birds to marine life have evolved to be able to navigate magnetic flows and we figured out how to do the same. Modern buildings all have a unique magnetic landscape produced by the Earth’s geomagnetic field. By utilizing the magnetic sensor (the compass) as well as other sensing technologies in a smartphone, IndoorAtlas’ software is able to use the magnetic field inside the building as a map to accurately pinpoint and track a person’s location indoors, producing a ‘blue dot’ on a map. We know the start point, the path a person’s taken and their end point. This is all done in real time – just like GPS outdoors. However, a major impediment to building location-based apps is that GPS doesn’t work indoors. Once you cross the threshold of a building, your smartphone can no longer accurately track your movements. So all of those really cool location-based apps (e.g. Uber, Foursquare, etc) no longer work so well when you’re in a shopping mall or transit center. Geomagnetic technology solves this problem.

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There are just 3 easy steps to take in order for developers to start using our software in their app. Once the location and floor plan is added to our app, the indoor venue must be mapped using our MapCreator app. Mapping a venue needs to happen just once unless major structural changes happen in the building (which is rare). From there, developers can use our SDK to build their location-based apps.

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Q: What are the biggest benefits for the users?

A: While there are many different types of indoor-positioning systems available on the market – including WiFi and Beacons – all of them require hardware or the combination of multiple systems working together to locate a position indoors. Positioning accuracy varies greatly but can be increased at the expense of infrastructure equipment and installations. This is where IndoorAtlas differs. Our software requires no large scale purchase, installation or maintenance of hardware to pinpoint a person’s location within 1-2 meters accuracy. In addition, our technology can utilize other existing technologies within a venue, such as WiFi, for even further optimization.

Q: You’ve recently announced a $2.45 million Grant from the European Commission; what’s your next step?

A: The recent European Commission grant we received will enable us to continue to execute on major initiatives. This includes new product development and feature enhancements, as well as the continuation of our efforts in sales and marketing.

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Q: What makes IndoorAtlas unique in the market?

A: In addition to scale and accuracy benefits, we consider our cloud platform to be unique in the market. We have focused our efforts on building an intuitive workflow and SDK to enable developers to build great location-based services without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Any developer around the globe can sign-up and start using our service for free.

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