Location and tracking in mobile guides

This paper describes several approaches for tracking the mobile user of guiding systems. It illuminates different aspects for selecting the right technology, such as accuracy and costs, and illustrates the results of our projects using the specific technology. For three examples, i.e. optical tracking, infrared-based systems and WLAN-tracking, we describe our applications from the field of indoor and museum guides. Each of the application requires specific capabilities from the technology ranging from cost-efficiency to precise measurement of position and orientation. We will therefore describe the different (dis-)advantages and draw the conclusions for the application functionality.