Five ships, 11,000 beacons and unique expert knowledge

In spring 2017, the world’s largest private cruise company, MSC Cruises, presented the digital innovation program #MSCforMe at the ITB Berlin. For three years, MSC Cruises had been working with behavioral researchers, digital and technology experts to further focus on the needs of its guests using the latest consumer technology. Favendo is proud to be one of these experts as a specialist in indoor positioning and mobile positioning and navigation solutions. MSC Cruises chose Favendo technology to develop the indoor navigation system for its ships. Luca Pronzati, Superintendent of Fleet at MSC Cruises: „The Smart Ship is a breakthrough in customer service and value delivery in the cruise ship industry. Favendo is the technology provider behind this revolution and they deliver reliably end-to-end.”

A core element of the #MSCforMe programme, which has been implemented on five ships already in autumn 2018, is the ability for guests to display their own position or the position of accompanying children on mobile devices. The first ever implemented kids tracking on a cruise ship worldwide comes from Favendo.

In addition, the solution enables stress-free navigation on the ship. All passengers’ comfort is considerably improved, personnel – and other Guests seeking rest – are relieved of the search for lost little adventurers and can concentrate on their core tasks. Insights gained into guests` behavior, habits and preferences through the sensor infrastructure are visualized as statistical key figures to optimize on-board operation.

In order to achieve exact positioning, GPS or other satellite navigation systems are used in the open air. Indoors, GPS loses its function due to architectural requirements. This is all the more true inside the floating steel giants with their numerous decks and their challenging combination of space-saving and very open architecture. We use the experience we have gained during the implementation of our solution elements in the hulls to continuously improve our software. Therefore, the latest version of our SDK allows an even more variable configuration of the integral BeaconScanning, which results in combination with the also refined RSSI filters, in a more accurate position determination in open architectures with floor changes. A complete revision of the Data Loading Module results in a massive improvement of […]

Bluetooth or UWB? Or both?

Bluetooth or Ultra Wideband? Which technology is the better indoor positioning technology?We’re trying to sort it out. When it comes to indoor positioning, customers can choose from a range of technologies and a number of combinations. We take a closer look at Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband in this text.

Both are so-called local radio techniques with which one can miraculously determine the positions of goods and persons. An overview of the “miraculous way”, i.e. how this works, can be found, for example, at location-based-services.de or, for those who want to know exactly, here. But then please bring the time that we do not want to take here and now.

After all, it is much more important to users that the position of an asset or person is determined at all. And both technologies can offer that. With UWB technology, positioning is even more accurate than with Bluetooth technology. So the thing is clear: UWB wins, right? It’s not that simple. After all, in addition to positioning accuracy, there are other parameters that can influence a decision in one direction or another. Costs are at the forefront. And UWB is right at the top of the list. iBeacons – as a transmitter – are already available for a few euros, UWB Tags can easily cost ten times the amount. In view of this, the question arises of how much more precise positioning is worth to me. And does the positioning have to be accurate to the centimetre to meet my requirements? So we have to have a closer look at the respective use case. For example, if I want to track a person in a shopping mall or leisure facility, a lower positioning accuracy is sufficient, after all I do not only recognize and discover the person at a distance of 30 centimetres. The same applies to industrial goods such as pallets or fork-lift trucks or production parts, which may only move on a fixed band section anyway. In these cases I should or have to reach for Bluetooth technology – not only for economic reasons. Because what UWB technology cannot achieve is the display of a position on a map in an app. UWB can only fulfil this core function of indoor navigation […]

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