The accuracy of BLE Beacon for analyzing space usage patterns of non-sedentary users in NWW office

Abstract

New Ways of Working (NWW) offices have become more popular because it can help use office space more efficiently and support modern worker’s flexible work style effectively. However, NWW office makes, in some cases, rather adverse effects on the users’ satisfaction and productivity because of lack of workstations and unsuitable workplace arrangements. Therefore, it is important to provide sufficient workstations adequate to their work by understanding user’s need. Analysis space usage patterns is one of the fundamental ways to understand users’ needs. For this, coordinate-level space usage data are required. Among the various methods estimating coordinate-level space usage data, BLE beacon have a lot of potentials because of its energy efficiency and higher estimation accuracy. However, to the best of our knowledge, previous studies have not confirmed the estimation accuracy of BLE beacon for non-sedentary users. Thus, this study aimed to prove estimation accuracy of BLE beacon when users are in non-sedentary state. Experiments were carried out in an office space using BLE beacon. In the experiment, an experimentee walked along the pre-determined path with a smartphone as a beacon signal receiver. Coordinate Error (CE) are computed to prove the estimation accuracy. The average CE of each experiment was inconsistent ranging from about 0.5m to 1.6m and the average value of ten experiments’ average CE was 0.99m. Through the comparison with previous studies, we founded that the estimation accuracy of non-sedentary user’s coordinate-level space usage data was not significantly different from that of sedentary user’s.