CSR claims it will be able to fix your indoor location accurately

CSR, the big navigation and Bluetooth chip maker, is announcing today new software that it says will enable accurate indoor positioning for Android apps.

Its SirFusion software development kit (SDK) for Android app developers will allow them to create apps that can take advantage of CSR’s indoor mapping capability, the Cambridge, England-based chip company said.

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The company is one of numerous companies creating indoor-mapping technologies, like rival Indoor Atlas in Finland. Traditional mapping technologies, like global positioning satellite (GPS) systems, don’t work because they need a line-of-sight to fix a location. But CSR uses a variety of signals to track indoor location.

SirFusion combines real-time Wi-Fi signals, satellite positioning information, pedestrian dead reckoning, and the company’s cloud-based CSR Positioning Center to calculate accurate indoor location. It can keep track of a person in real time as the person walks through an indoor venue.

“Offering indoor positioning accurate enough to be useful has been a challenge that the industry has been trying to solve for many years,” said Anthony Murray, senior vice president of the Business Group at CSR, in a statement. “But with consumers coming to expect anytime-anywhere positioning wherever they are, our customers have continued to express a growing interest for highly accurate indoor positioning without the need for additional infrastructure.”

The SirFusion tech can work with Android 4.4 or later. The SDK will ship in the first quarter of 2015.