IPIN

: sistema de localização e navegação indoor com leitura de QR codes

Abstract

The highly complex architecture of hospital facilities, technological advances, and the fact that these facilities are dynamic, specialized, and constantly changing make the flow inside them increasingly intense and disorganized. This negatively influences the operability, security, and flexibility of these institutions. In this sense, this master's work is intended to develop a solution that aims to overcome the difficulty felt by hospital users to find certain areas within it. It consists of a mobile application that uses the reading of QR Codes as a technology to locate the user and indicate the route to reach the desired destination. The case study of this project was the -1 floor of the company’s Craftable Software Porto’s headquarters where QR Codes were placed strategically throughout the building that, when read, allow the identification of the user's position. Based on information about the user's current location and the final destination chosen by the user, a map is displayed illustrating the route to take, indicating the number of steps to take until reaching the next QR Code. The user must read the QR Codes successively until reaching the desired destination in order to monitor their location as they travel along the route described on the map. To create this proof of concept we use JavaScript as the programming language, React Native as the framework, and Expo as the development platform, which publishes and updates the application directly in the cloud. The command "npm start" is executed in the terminal of the Visual Studio Code programming environment to start the project. Git controls the source code versions, GitHub acts as the remote Git repository and Fork as the connection between the remote repository and GitHub. A financial analysis of the project was made to evaluate its economic viability, and the initial investment, annual fixed and variable costs, and annual revenues were calculated, and, depending on the estimated net result, the investment is expected to be recovered early in the fifth year. The main goal of this project was achieved since it was possible to develop a proof-of-concept of a mobile application to locate and guide users inside hospitals. This solution is reliable, intuitive, low-cost, unique, and immediately accessible. The future perspectives are based on the implementation of additional functionalities, such as the existence of an automatic refresh of the user's location at each step taken, the existence of a login page that collects information regarding the user and establishes a direct connection to the hospital, the calculation of the step size according to the user's gender and height, the creation of an external database, the development of an algorithm for the automatic identification of the route to take or the presentation of it using predefined coordinates, and the implementation of a more robust product in a hospital environment. In addition, it is necessary to obtain the product certification and the initial financial investment for its commercialization.

Date of Award	8 Sept 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Bruno Alexandre Reis de Almeida (Supervisor) & Pedro Miguel Rodrigues (Co-Supervisor)