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Navigine | New York, United States

Simplified passenger experience and effective navigation in railway stations

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Navigine designs solutions based on indoor positioning for clients in industries ranging from logistics & warehousing to retail, and more. The location infrastructures they help to set up provide real-time insights into the flow of goods and people. With over a thousand installations worldwide, Navigine is experienced in both leveraging the power of location data and building deployments in a wide variety of business environments.

 

Two years ago, they had a unique opportunity to be a part of the world’s biggest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup, when it came to their native Russia. With huge numbers of fans making the trip from all over the globe and then travelling extensively within Russia for weeks, rail authorities recognized the need to develop new functionalities in a mobile application to assist visitors in practical issues like navigating the transport network.

 

Navigine was perfectly positioned to take on the challenge of helping to enhance and simplify the visitor experience for the incredible number of foreign visitors using the Russian rail network. Working with both hardware and software providers to manage an integrated solution that formed the backbone of the application, Navigine set out to deliver a service that would benefit both visitors and the rail network itself by making it easier for travellers to more easily get around without needing assistance.

 

With football fans able to find the right platform, get their questions answered, store their luggage and all the other things passengers need, all during what was likely their first-ever visit to an unfamiliar setting, the entire process of moving so many people from city to city would go smoother for everyone involved.

 

Plus, from Navigine’s perspective, the scale of the project was the perfect showcase for the capabilities of their location-based solutions.

 

Streamlining The Passenger Experience

 

The project called for deployments in nine railway stations spread throughout the national network but all offering full support for travelling fans. The functionalities of the application included facilitating ticket purchases, providing virtual maps of railway stations and wayfinding services to important points within the facilities. Integration with the mobile app of Russian Railways through Navigine’s SDK made parts of this possible, but location-based services needed more.

 

Learn more about indoor navigation with Bluetooth LE Beacons here >

 

To provide the data needed for highly accurate positioning in real time, Navigine turned to beacons from Kontakt.io to configure navigation capabilities.

 

“Kontakt.io has proven to be a valuable hardware partner. We implement their beacons to configure navigation solutions through our platform in deployments around the world. Kontakt.io’s beacons have a stable signal, are easy to deploy and deliver long service life. Selecting them is an easy decision for any solution provider who counts on high performance and reliability.”
Alexey Panyov, CEO at Navigine

 

Using beacons from Kontakt.io, all nine infrastructures for the World Cup project were founded on solid, reliable real-time location data. Navigine also mentions the ease of collecting live battery status updates, quick installation and simple mounting as key to the fast and effective hardware deployments for the mobile application.

 

A Big Win

 

The task of accommodating enormous crowds and helping them navigate a transport network was successfully completed thanks to Navigine’s solution based on Kontakt.io beacons. Tourists from all over the world had a simple but effective navigation tool that reduced time spent on wayfinding and turned what could have been a difficult and stressful experience into something entirely different.

 

Navigine says that this digital solution, in addition to being easy to access and use, benefitted visitors to Russia in other ways. “The most common navigation tools in modern railway stations are signs, but it is impossible to place so many signs inside a railway station building. There are just too many languages and facilities. Unlike offline navigation instruments, which are limited in space, the mobile-enabled system is unlimited. The latter provides much more useful information.”

 

The project met with excellent reviews from users and handled traffic well over the expected level. Now, two years later, the number of railway stations with similar deployments is up to thirty and Navigine has learned even more about creating effective solutions based on location data.

 

Indoor Navigation with Bluetooth Beacons