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Finns Use Earth’s Magnetic Pole for Indoor Positioning

Engineers have developed an indoor positioning system based on animals’ navigation methods, which rely on local anomalies or disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field. Finnish startup IndoorAtlas—a spinoff company founded by University of Oulu researchers —created a smartphone application that uses magnetic fluctuations, which can occur in buildings constructed with reinforced concrete and steel, to map indoor locations. A developer-user must collect magnetic-field data in a location before using the new mapping developer toolkit. The software-based technology requires no hardware other than a smartphone with a magnetometer and is reportedly accurate to within 0.1 to two meters. (PhysOrg)(PC World)(IndoorAtlas)

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