Funded Projects

Start of funding 01.07.2015

Innovative Applications of Bluetooth Beacons

Prof. Dr. Markus U. Mock
University of applied sciences Landshut
Fakultät Informatik

Bluetooth Low-Energy beacons are novel devices that can provide rich context and proximity signals better than current techniques such as geo-location via GPS or Wifi. A prototype built by Prof. Mock’s research group integrating these devices with mobile apps and a backend service has demonstrated the use case of a public classroom schedule information system. Our Californian project partner has already built a more sophisticated platform for managing beacon-related information that also integrates with other systems, e.g. authentication. We have two main goals of the cooperation: (1) collaborate and leverage this software and hardware platform in the research projects currently going on at he mobile computing lab, and (2) explore new applications that combine BLE devices and other emerging technologies such as LTE Direct.

Final report:
The goal of our project was to explore novel applications of the emerging Bluetooth Low Energy beacon technology. As part of our cooperation, Professor Mock’s team successfully developed several applications that leverage the beacon technology: (1) a “beacon chat room”, (2) a university information system and (3) a real-time bus schedule information system. These are described in more detail in “Mock & Seel: Proximity-based Services, pp. 27 – 28 in Mobile Anwendungen in Unternehmen, Springer Verlag 2016” but briefly described below.

The Beacon Chat Room that we had proposed was successfully realized by leveraging the MQTT protocol and Mosquitto server that our project partner Qorio Labs made us aware of. We use the beacon ID as an identifier to create a chat room on Mosquitto to which users in the vicinity of the beacon can connect by presenting the same ID as an entry key. This application was realized in a server component acting as a broker for MQTT and an Android mobile app for the user interface.

A second application that we were able to explore was a university information system. We outfitted some university rooms and lecture halls with beacons and coded their location on our server. This server in turn establishes a connection to the university database of lectures and events at the Hochschule Landshut. An accompanying mobile app displays the information on a mobile device to the user. Thus students and employees of the university can obtain up-to-date information about what events and classes are taking place in a particular room simply by opening the application in the proximity, e.g., in front of a room.

A third result were able to achieve was the integration of real-time information with the proximity established by the beacons. In collaboration with the local bus company, Stadtwerke Landshut, we created a mobile App and supporting backend that enables bus riders to obtain realtome bus schedule information. In this scenario, the beacons code the bus stop including the bus direction. A user of our app simply has to open the application and, since the beacon provides the identification of the bus stop, we can immediately contact the Stadtwerke´s real time information server and send the information of the corresponding bus line(s) at that stop to the bus rider, so that they know when to expect a bus.

In summary, we were able to successfully able to explore three novel applications of Bluetooth Beacon technology and gain valuable insights into different classes of proximity based service that can be realized them. In future research, we intend to explore in more detail the user interactions with these kinds of systems as well as explore pursue other application areas of beacons.