Amadeus Ventures invests in ‘GPS for indoors’ start-up

Situm tech can be used to navigate around airports, train stations and museums Continue reading →

Amadeus Ventures is investing in a ‘GPS for indoors’ start-up called Situm.

The Spanish firm provides indoor positioning, tracking and navigation services.

It can guide visitors inside a large building, track the location of security staff in case of emergencies, or track moving objects inside factories.

Travellers can download an application using Situm’s indoor GPS to navigate around an airport, train station, museum or gallery.

For managers of airports, train stations, conferences or hotels, Situm allows real-time viewing of staff movement.

Thousands of buildings around the world have already used its technology, which provides high location accuracy, up to one metre, with the lowest infrastructure investment and complexity for indoor services.

Situm’s indoor positioning system (IPS) applies a unique location algorithm, able to use all available sensors in smartphones collaboratively.

Global navigation satellite systems (GPS ) often do not work indoors because the microwaves that GPS uses to identify locations are reduced and scattered by roofs, walls and other objects.

Situm Technologies founder and CEO Víctor Alvarez said: “When travelling, we often find ourselves in new places and unfamiliar surroundings, which can be daunting.

“By delivering a minimal-infrastructure solution, and harnessing the power of personal mobile technology, we can quickly give travellers reassurance that they can always get to where they need to be.”

Amadeus Innovation and Ventures head Katherine Grass said: “Improving operations and performance across all parts of the travel sector is a key area of focus for us at Amadeus.

“By working together with our own teams, developers and start-ups, we are focused on developing new ways to relieve the tensions that exist for all of us when travelling.

“Situm offers a really powerful solution and we look forward to having it as part of our investment portfolio and working together to solve some of these challenges.”

Situm is the latest addition to a portfolio that also includes start-ups such as Avuxi, Betterez, Bluesmart, BookingPal, Flyr and Yapta.

Amadeus Ventures also invested in Cabify and successfully exited from its investment in 2015