System design and implementation of a people flow management system for automated data collection

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to build a system that is capable of providing a solution to people flow management at Innorange Oy. Innorange Oy is a five employee start-up company that provides flow data to companies to allow them to perform business optimisation.

Innorange's system uses a Bluetooth-based solution to provide an automated data collection system. Both the collection and analysis of data is done within the system, but only data collection is the objective of this study. The collection of data was done using sensors on Android and Embedded Linux that execute Bluetooth inquiries and send them through servers in the cloud to a database for further analysis. It's interesting that NoSQL databases, such as Mongo Database, were viable to use when developing the system, and that it helped to accelerate development owing to its programming interface and large community.

The system was deployed at the Särkänniemi amusement park in Tampere (Finland). The results redirected the project to switch the sensor platform from Android to Embedded Linux. This was due to the instability of the Android platform for industrial purposes. Before deployment, an analysis of privacy requirements was carried out, in order to protect, the data obtained, and to refrain from storing confidential data or violate privacy laws.

This technology, provided by Innorange Oy, is demonstrated to be valuable in business optimisation, as was stated in its customer's scenario. Furthermore, the remits obtained during its pilot phase only corroborate this.