How does Google Indoor Navigation work?

Question

For a project at my university I have to collect information about Google Indoor Maps. I spent several hours searching information about how Google Indoor Navigation really work

Answer 1

This project just provides maps for indoor places. It doesn't do anything special to augment navigation in these places beyond the standard (GPS, WiFi, etc).

When they talk about (augmenting) positioning with Wifi and Cellular data, they are talking about the same stuff they use on the regular Google maps. This data is collected from cell tower info, and the Wifi stuff is sniffed from the Google street-view cars and then augmented by user-data as people with devices come into contact with these devices and send info back to Google.

It is not very accurate - or even accurate as GPS. It is kind of a "ballpark" estimate. For example, if a Google street-view car detected your WiFi signal when it drove by your house - if you had no GPS, and Google Maps saw your WiFi box, it could estimate that you were somewhere within a few hundred feet of where the Google Street View car detected the signal.

Not as accurate as GPS - but not too bad if you conciser within a few hundred feet better than "no idea". In short - these sources to not give you better or more refined positioning of indoor places. They would be good - for example - to be able to tell you that you are in that particular building if you were inside, and out of GPS coverage.