Mobile Navigation using RFID in Herne

Excerpt from reference map of inner-city test area in Herne © NavitestNRW

Museums today offer so much more than just art or history. In Munster indeed already three years ago a multimedia facility consisting of a PDA with integrated RFID-Reader were made available to visitors to explore the geological-palaeontological museum (as reported by media|NRW). In the meantime of course technology and also application possibilities have continued to develop further – and the result can now be seen for example in the Ruhr Valley town of Herne, where a seamless tourist navigation service is currently being trialed for both outdoor and indoor use.

The NRW research project NavitestNRW has recently set up a tourist test platform using RFID technology. Tourists can head for various sight-seeing destinations within a circular route which extends 4.5 kilometers around the city of Herne, either on foot or by bicycle, and call up information on Points of Interest (POI’s) in the form of text or voice output from their mobile navigation devices. More POI’s can also be found within the Herne LWL Museum for Archaeology.

This test platform plans to give users future access to products and services providing geoinformation, navigation and positioning. According to NavitestNRW, this will allow both users and developers to face a "realistic RFID test scenario", which means that alongside its use in logistics and goods management with Location Based Services (LBS), RFID technology will also be increasing its potential in tourism too.

The aim of NavitestNRW is to test future developments in the various fields of application of satellite navigation and satellite locating systems under realistic conditions in the center of North Rhine-Westphalia which will then undergo a comprehensive benchmark exercise. The project was presented during the course of a round-table session in Herne at the end of June 2009 to a group of 100 visitors with expert knowledge. NavitestNRW aims to combine precise positioning services with an extensive selection of reference data so that navigation-based applications can be developed for the business-to-business areas and at the same time location based services (LBS) be developed for the mass market. The project has the support of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Economic Affairs. The following companies are all active project partners: VCS AG in Bochum, EFTAS GmbH in Münster, GEOsat GmbH in Mülheim-an-der-Ruhr and LOGIBALL GmbH in Herne.

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