Did you see Bob? Human localization using mobile phones

Finding a person in a public place, such as in a library, conference hotel, or shopping mall, can be difficult. The difficulty arises from not knowing where the person may be at that time; even if known, navigating through an unfamiliar place may be frustrating. Maps and floor plans help in some occasions, but such maps may not be always handy. In a small scale poll, 80% of users responded that the ideal solution would be "to have an escort walk me to the desired person". This paper identifies the possibility of using mobile phone sensors and opportunistic user-intersections to develop an electronic escort service. By periodically learning the walking trails of different individuals, as well as how they encounter each other in space-time, a route can be computed between any pair of persons. The problem bears resemblance to routing packets in delay tolerant networks, however, its application in the context of human localization raises distinct research challenges. We design and implement Escort, a system that guides a user to the vicinity of a desired person in a public place. We only use an audio beacon, randomly placed in the building, to enable a reference frame. We do not rely on GPS, WiFi, or war-driving to locate a person - the Escort user only needs to follow an arrow displayed on the phone. Evaluation results from experiments in parking lots and university buildings show that, on average, the user is brought to within 8m of the destination. We believe this is an encouraging result, opening new possibilities in mobile, social localization.