A City College of New York-headed group has developed groundbreaking technology that could chart real-time paths, distributing users—both sighted and low vision—a seamless and precise indoor navigation experience complete with turn-by-turn guidance in a major stride toward revolutionizing indoor navigation.
The team that developed the indoor navigation system. Clockwise from left: Zhigang Zhu, Jin Chen, Arber Ruci, and Hao Tang. Image Credit: The City College of New York.
The invention has received a US patent titled “System and Method for Real-time Indoor Navigation.”
This groundbreaking innovation originates from the City College-based CUNY Computational Vision and Convergence Laboratory (CCVCL) led by Zhigang Zhu, the Herbert G. Kayser Professor of Computer Science in CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering, alongside its collaborative partners. Comprising CCNY alumni, these partners encompass:
- Jin Chen, Class of 2020 (BS) and 2022 (MS), a Data Scientist and Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of neARabl Technology.
- Arber Ruci, Class of 2012 (BS), CCVCL member, CEO and Co-Founder of neARabl, and Entrepreneur in Residence at the National Science Foundation’s New York I-Corps Hub; and
- Hao Tang, Class of 2003 (MS), CVCL Member and Professor of computer information systems at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
neARabl, an organization that emerged from CCVCL, was formally founded in October 2021. The cutting-edge technology is exclusively licensed to it, and it collaborates with Bentley Systems Inc.
This progressive indoor navigation system has a modeling subsystem that interprets multimodal locational input in a detailed manner and generates models for overlapping local regions on its own. The navigation system then uses these models to its advantage to dynamically chart routes in real-time.
The Smart and Accessible Transportation Hub, a collaborative project between CUNY, Rutgers, Lighthouse Guild, and Bentley Systems, is where the technology’s development began. It was intended to be a revolutionary endeavor that would turn a sizable hub for transportation into an intelligent and easily navigable hub. The result was a mobile augmented reality (AR) system designed for assistive indoor navigation that provides turn-by-turn assistance over large indoor areas without requiring expensive infrastructure.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul commended the technology during the New York State Innovation Summit. This recognition followed the CCNY team's utilization of the State’s innovation ecosystem, notably leveraging NYSTAR and FuzeHub, to execute 70 pilots across the state, involving more than 6,000 users.
Their ongoing dedication involves further refining the technology, with a commitment to generating additional intellectual property, such as advancements in 3D reconstruction and the conversion of 2D blueprints into 3D models.
National Science Foundation, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence funded the research.