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than looking at dozens of screens with images from
security cameras. Live monitoring of the elements’
positions on a specific area allows managers to iden-
tify congested sectors. It also allows him to identify
hot and cold zones which may be related to the inter-
ests points at hand or, for instance, to a local security
issue or other type of event such a medical emergence.
Regarding long term data analysis the advantages
of using such a system are several and may be more
than the ones presented next. By analyzing all the
paths taken by the elements, it is possible to obtain the
hot zones on any time frame and thus evaluate the suc-
cess rate of a given promotional campaign and among
other things. Erroneous and random movements may
also be correlated with a security issue, and thus this
system could also represent an interesting addition to
conventional security systems. The results later ob-
tained would clearly point out the success of the lay-
out redesign. Of course these last measures imply cor-
relating client positions with goods bought by him.
The paper is structured as follows: section 2 de-
scribes the current state of the art regarding the sev-
eral areas of knowledge involved in the development
of the system described in this paper. Section 3 de-
scribes the tool that simulates the environment as well
as its architecture and core functionalities. Section 4
discusses the results obtained so far and the next sec-
tion concludes the paper by summarizing the focus
of this research work and pointing out future lines of
discussion.
2 STATE-OF-THE-ART
Nowadays, tracking systems represent an important
research area as their applications are transversal to
several areas of knowledge (e.g computer science,
medicine, simulation, robotics as well as industrial
tracks). In the past few years, technology has evolved
in order to provide more accurate measurements. In
the robotics area, for better modeling the world, it is
extremely relevant to accurately process the signals
received by the multiple sensors involved. Locating
objects of the real world to the modeled one is a criti-
cal task for the appliance of the navigation algorithms
and methodologies. Following these advances the
work published by Hyunwoong Park (Park H., 2006)
presents a new kind of sensor system with multiple
rotating range sensors. Such system allows a robot
to guide itself on a priori unknown world. On the
other hand these tracking systems also find interesting
applications on scenarios where the context environ-
ment is already known. Regarding this last system,
locating elements assumes a crucial role. To achieve
this goal, several technologies have been used. By
doing a brief comparison, it is observable that all of
them have their strengths and flaws concerning char-
acteristics like the cost in terms of initial investment
and maintenance. There are others related to environ-
ment specificities. Among these last, other parame-
ters such as coverable area, tracking detection errors
and occlusion problems should also be considered.
One of the most effective technologies is also one
of the most expensive ones and concerns detection of
thermal signatures. This technique is appropriate to
living organisms which emit particular heat waves.
One particular application of this technology is the
monitoring of the fauna in the ocean (Raizer, 2003).
Another interesting technology is Bluetooth because
most modern mobile equipments are prepared to send
a receive data though this protocol. Although the
initial investment is low the coverable area is not
very wide and battery consumption is high, in relative
terms (Jappinen P., 2007).
The cheapest solution is infrared based. Even
though its price attractiveness, infrared systems tend
to fail on most real environments because the signal
is unable to reach the target if there is an opaque ob-
ject between the receiver and the target (Krotosky J.,
2007).
Two of the most emergent technologies for track-
ing are RFID and Wi-Fi based. The first one still lacks
standardization which is somehow reflected in the
pricing of both receivers and transmitters. It is based
on high frequency radio waves having the detectable
tags a passive or an active response. Passive tags are
only detectable on a 13 meter radius and are used
for instance on the new USA passports. Active tags,
alternatively, are detectable on a much wider range
but are more expensive (around 400%) essentially be-
cause the tags require an independent power supply
(Chao C., 2007). Wi-Fi may also be considered as a
tracking technology. This approach is mainly used for
creating wireless computer networks but in this case
the involved tracking only requires the usage of the
low level protocols. This type of solution is interest-
ing because it makes possible reusing existent com-
puter networks for other proposes and takes advan-
tages from possible simple detection with at least one
access point. With only one access point the system’s
precision may not be very high but there is no need
for triangulation. Occlusion problems and signals
losses, with the use of this technique will be reduced
to a residual level in both open spaces and indoors
– considering that indoor spaces do not have signifi-
cant metal structures within the walls) (Mingkhwan,
2006).
Another area that suffered several developments
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