Sensing Framework for the Internet of Actors in the Value Co-Creation Process with a Beacon-Attachable Indoor Positioning System

Abstract

To evaluate and improve the value of a service, it is important to measure not only the outcomes, but also the process of the service. Value co-creation (VCC) is not limited to outcomes, especially in interpersonal services based on interactions between actors. In this paper, a sensing framework for a VCC process in retail stores is proposed by improving an environment recognition based indoor positioning system with high positioning performance in a metal shelf environment. The conventional indoor positioning systems use radio waves; therefore, errors are caused by reflection, absorption, and interference from metal shelves. An improvement in positioning performance was achieved in the proposed method by using an IR (infrared) slit and IR light, which avoids such errors. The system was designed to recognize many and unspecified people based on the environment recognition method that the receivers had installed, in the service environment. In addition, sensor networking was also conducted by adding a function to transmit payload and identification simultaneously to the beacons that were attached to positioning objects. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by installing it not only in an experimental environment with ideal conditions, but posteriorly, the system was tested in real conditions, in a retail store. In our experimental setup, in a comparison with equal element numbers, positioning identification was possible within an error of 96.2 mm in a static environment in contrast to the radio wave based method where an average positioning error of approximately 648 mm was measured using the radio wave based method (Bluetooth low-energy fingerprinting technique). Moreover, when multiple beacons were used simultaneously in our system within the measurement range of one receiver, the appropriate setting of the pulse interval and jitter rate was implemented by simulation. Additionally, it was confirmed that, in a real scenario, it is possible to measure the changes in movement and positional relationships between people. This result shows the feasibility of measuring and evaluating the VCC process in retail stores, although it was difficult to measure the interaction between actors.

Mouth-in-the-Door: The Effect of a Sound Image of an Avatar Intruding on Personal Space That Deviates in Position From the Visual Image

“…Rapport-building behaviors performed by skilled salespeople who are not involved in the dialog itself include backchannels, and interpersonal proximity [78], [79]. Although some experimental observations have shown the usefulness of these rapport-building behaviors in real stores that use sensor networks [80], [81], little remains clear in the context of customer service via VEs. In VR space interactions in general, regardless of the service context, the effects of changes in the avatar's appearance on the impression of the other person and on communication have been studied.…”

Semantic Data Mining in Ubiquitous Sensing: A Survey

“…For social sensing in ubiquitous and social environments, a variety of heterogeneous sensor data can be observed and analyzed, for example, considering specific sensors, social media and the ubiquitous social web, and so forth, cf. [ 147 , 161 , 162 , 163 ]. This specifically relates to observing human interactions, that is, social and physical activities [ 140 , 144 , 145 , 148 , 151 , 164 ].…”