Generation of navigation graphs for indoor space

Abstract

This article proposes a comprehensive approach to computing a navigation graph for an indoor space. It focuses on a single floor, but the work is easily extensible to multi-level spaces. The approach proceeds by using a formal model, based on the combinatorial map but enhanced with geometric and semantic information. The process is almost fully automatic, taking as input the building plans providing the geometric structure of the floors and semantics of the building, such as functions of interior spaces, portals, etc. One of the novel aspects in this work was the use of combinatorial maps and their duals to provide a compact formal description of the topology and connectivity of the indoor structure represented by a connected, embedded graph. While making use of existing libraries for the more routine computational geometry involved, the research develops several new algorithms, including one for computing the local kernel of a region. The process is evaluated by means of a case study using part of a university building.

Keywords:

• navigation graph
• combinatorial map
• algorithm
• topology
• geometry
• semantics
• indoor space

Acknowledgements

This material is partly based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant number IIS-0916219. The authors are grateful to Jia Wang, Reinhard Moratz, Nicholas Giudice and Lisa Walton for discussions relating to this work. We also thank all the experiment participants.

Notes

1. IndoorGML (http://indoorgml.net).

2. IndoorOSM (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/IndoorOSM).

3. Visibility in polygons (http://www.geometrylab.de/applet-5-en).

4. JTS Topology Suite (http://www.vividsolutions.com/jts/jtshome.htm).