The main aim of this report is to develop, design and analyse a
system to simulate a context-aware routing algorithm in an
indoor scenario.
The context-aware purpose of this project is to take advantage
of the interaction of the routing system with an entity when it is
relevant. From all the context entities, the spatial environment
is one of the most important, and the one which more
information can be taken advantage of. Benefits can be
obtained from using context-awareness in many ways, which
have a special interest in the Information Technologies area.
The intention of this report is to create a new application using
context information related to the space, to be more precise, the
position of the entities within a concrete location, and its
preferences. The primary target is to design a supermarket in
which benefits can be obtained from the position of the
customers, their preferences (concretely the shopping list) and
also the location of the products, to create an intelligent and
efficient supermarket for the customer (but also for the
supermarket in itself) point of view.
Knowing the position of the customers and the location of the
products in the supermarket can be useful to draw up efficient
routes that can guide the customers through the corridors to
buy their products quickly, which is the main reason why the
system uses a shortest path routing algorithm to find the best
route from the customer to the wished product. This algorithm
considers the shortest distance and also the position of the rest
of the customers so the system is able to guide the customers
through another path in cases where they reach congested
zones in the supermarket.
Bluetooth wireless technology is used to accomplish the
localization and system communication task. In addition the
routing algorithm is adapted to fit the requirements of the
intelligent supermarket. The design and implementation of a
GUI simulator written in Java that represents the designed
system is the main goal of this project. This simulator serves as
a tool to test the system operation offering the possibility to
modify parameters such as the rate and distribution type of the
arrival of customers, the number of customers, subjective
criteria of congestion and speed of the simulation among other
parameters.
Different types of statistics and the possibility to generate files
with the information of the simulation are the main outcomes
of this project, besides the GUI. In addition, this information
can be translated into a Matlab script using a parser designed
for this purpose. Finally the results and conclusions of the
system are presented, and the future lines to follow the
development of this innovative project. |