Korean small business was successful in materializing beacon into software (SW), so-called ‘Virtual Beacon Solution’. By solving battery and accuracy problems, IoT(Internet of Things) environment can be easily built, and this will bring change to beacon market that is centered around hardware (HW).
Bluetos (President Lee, WonChan) announced on the 20th that it will developer ‘Cyber Toscon’ and release it in the second half of this year. This is a solution to provide location-based service (LBS) by creating Virtual Beacon through virtual beacon equipments. It already applied for relative patent and secured intellectual property (IP). “We are currently testing stability of transmitting and receiving data. We can release it as soon as we are done with the testing.” President Lee Won Chan of Bluetos said about current testing it is under to be finalized for production.
Cyber Toscon is a method where signals can be transmitted and received within a beacon domain by providing virtual coordinates. Radio frequency is sent from a corresponding point by assuming there is a beacon at a certain point. Signals from beacon can be transmitted and received even without equipment, and this is same thing as a Smartphone being aware as if it has received a signal from a beacon.“Virtual beacon is not based on transmitting and receiving data, but it is a technology where a signal can be sent at a wanted point.” President Lee explained about the basis of this technology. It is like recent uprising of ‘Software Definition’s domain has expanded to beacon. Bluetos’s experience and know-how in developing access control system and emergency evacuation system through Bluetooth frame redesign technology are remained in the technology behind virtual beacon.
Beacon equipments are not needed if virtualized beacons are used, and they need their batteries to be changed every 2 years for them to work continuously. Business circle assessed that battery life is actually a lot shorter depending on transmission and reception. “Once virtual beacon solution is built, signals can be exchanged at exact coordinates without changing equipment.” President Lee said about the advantage of virtual beacon.
LBS’s accuracy problem can be solved too. Signal sizes in beacon equipments are not constant depending on their design substrates and batteries. But according to Bluetos’s explanation, exact location awareness is possible if signals are sent to software at a constant size.
Bluetos is trying to build the best indoor navigation function by continuously upgrading Cyber Toscon. It is trying to improve its accuracy by making Cyber Toscon recognize location at a 1-meter unit. “This will bring great innovation to companies that use virtual beacon. New form of service is possible such as IoT service being connected to online virtually even without having hardware attached to an object.” President Lee talked more advantages of virtual beacon.
Staff Reporter Kwon, Dongjoon | djkwon@etnews.com