The German exhibition center scheduled to host the 2021 International Dental Show (IDS) meeting next March has partnered with Samsung SDS to develop eGuard, a novel indoor positioning app designed to better manage crowd density at in-person conferences.
The Koelnmesse exhibition center in Cologne partnered with Samsung SDS to create an indoor positioning system to monitor the number of people at exhibition halls in real-time. The system is central to the eGuard app, which tracks visitor flow, visitor frequencies, visitor length of stay, and other position data using a geomagnetic field and beacons.
The app will use dynamically updated, color-coded sections to make live crowd density data available to conferencegoers during IDS and other in-person trade shows during the COVID-19 pandemic. Users will be able to reference the color-coded charts to determine the best time to visit the exhibit hall. In addition, the conference organizer can use the data to implement measures to prevent or disperse large gatherings.
The eGuard app would need to be mandatory for conferencegoers for visitor movement to be tracked accurately, the companies noted. The system uses anonymized data and does not record personal data, they added.
