IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2022 - 71

Figure 6. Experimental findings. (a) Average time to find nearest trash bin without FinderXand with FinderX.
(b) Average distance covered by the user to find the nearest trash bin. (c) and (d) Energy consumption of the
user's phone. If FinderXruns all-time in the background, it consumes only 4% of total battery (d), if run in an
on-demand fashion, it takes 3% (c).
EXPERIMENTAL FINDINGS
To test the feasibility and accuracy of FinderX,
weset up a testbed at an urban university campus.
First, we preconfigured sets of beacons for different
amenities. For the experiment, we chose to set
beacons on trash bins and mobile/portable restrooms.
There were 16 participants in the study
who voluntarily tested the FinderX application.
There were two portions of this experiment; first,
we give some dummy trash to the participants
and ask them to dump it to their nearest trash
bins. We calculate the time and distance to search
and dump the trash. Second, we ask participants
to install the FinderX application on their smartphones.
We explain how the application works for
the participants. Meantime, we relocate the trash
bin to a new location but at an identical distance,
which is already discovered by the participant.
We ask them to dump the trash again with the
help of FinderX. Each participant conducts this
experiment two times at different locations. We
calculated the distance and time and recorded the
average values Figure 6 illustrates the experimental
findings.
The average time to find amenities without
FinderX is 4.87 minutes and 4.55 minutes for the
first time and second time [Figure 6(a)]. In contrast,
the average time to find amenities with
FinderX is 3.29 minutes and 2.77 minutes, respectively.
We infer that as the participants were
new to find the amenities and the application, it
takes more time in the beginning.
January/February 2022
The average distance is also decreased with
the use of FinderX. Although we measured an
approximate distance, the distance amount was
identical throughout the experiment. On average
the participants traveled 187 meters to find a
trash bin without FinderX [Figure 6(b)]. However,
they traveled 122 meters when using the
app. We have configured the beacons to get the
signal from 100 meters away. However, we
received signals from a maximum of 80 meters
away from a beacon in the study. A large number
of concrete buildings reduced signal strength.
FinderX consumes very low energy in user's
smartphones. There are two versions of our app,
on-demand application-user manually starts
the application while needed, and app-in-background-the
application runs in the background
all-time in the user phone. In both cases, FinderX
takes less than 4% energy overall [Figure 6(c)
and (d)].
CONCLUSION
This article reports the design, implementation,
and evaluation of the Bluetooth beaconbased
amenities finding system in the urban
city context. It also presents a comparison of
micropositioning error between GPS and Bluetooth
beacons in the outdoor environment.
FinderX provides the nearest trash bin and restroom
distance to the pedestrian within a beacon
range. The empirical testing demonstrates
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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2022

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