Where Camp Berlin 2014 / Presentation by KitLocate - a Yandex company

Making Contextual Awareness a Reality on a Mass Scale while Keeping it Personal

Creating an Always-on Location SDK

• Tracking the app user’s location 24/7

• Runs in the background

• Efficiently

• Enabling smart engagement

• Make apps relevant

– Provide relevant info and offers at the right

time and place!

• Provide better service and value

– Smart reminders

• Reduce spam

– Enable truly personal marketing based on

consumer needs

Contextual awareness is

great!

How did we get here?

• The road from app to SDK

• KitLocate in brief

• Developing an SDK and platform

that enables always-on location

features

• Yandex

• Largest European Internet Business

– $9B Market Cap

– $1,207 B Revenues (2013)

– YNDX (NASDAQ) (2011)

• More than 6000 people strong

• 17 offices in 8 countries (Berlin!)

• #1 Internet Destination in Russia (61%)

• CIS and Turkey

• Traffic layer • Driving directions• Geographic search• Satellite imagery• Vector map data• Map rendering• Panoramas

Sensing location on a mobile device

GPS Cell towerWiFiBluetooth NFC

AccelormeterGyroscopeMagnometerTemperatureHumidity

MicrophonesCamerasLightProximityTouch

Criteria Cell Wi-Fi GPS

~Accuracy(radius in meters)

500 - 2000 30 - 200 5 - 20

Energy consumption

Low* Low* High

Limitations Signalavailability

Wi-Fi enabledand mapping

GPS enabled and initial focus time **

Reliability Reliable (-) Sometimes… Reliable (-)

Location Sensor Attributes

Obstacles along the way…

• 24/7 location sampling

• Low tolerance for power

hungry apps

LOCATION SAMPLING IS

VERY POWER HUNGRY

How to consume less (industry lowest)

• Intelligent sampling of sensors (a few examples):

• Use accelerometer to verify movement before periodic sampling

• Increase sample rate and quality as user gets close to Geo

Fence

• A lot of smart coding tradecraft

• Running efficiently in the background

• Internet connection management :

• Prefer using WIFI when available

• Prefer sending big data chunks in low frequency

Sometimes sensors do not tell the whole

truth

• THE PROBLEM:

• Some devices don’t receive accelerometer changes

when the screen is off

• THE SOLUTION:

• Check if during an interval of the accelerometer you

received any changes – if not, remember it and stop

using the accelerometer when the screen is off

Accelerometer Problem

• THE PROBLEM:

• Some devices receive upon the initiation of the

iteration old location from last iteration, but with a new

timestamp.

• THE SOLUTION:

• Examine location history over a longer period and

ignore the locations which are recognized from old

iterations.

Location Sample

Problem

• THE PROBLEM:

• Wi-Fi – Incorrect mapping can cause false locations

• Cell - Reception problems can cause significant location

change

• GPS – Mocking locations can cause false locations

• THE SOLUTION:

• We don’t trust the locations we receive. We compare it to

the user movement pattern and verify its location

False Location

• Missing Hardware

• Check every hardware before using it – not all phones

have GPS…

• Missing Software

• Some ROMs don’t offer Google Play services,

especially devices sold in China / Russia / LATAM.

Missing Hardware /

Software

USER’S

PERCEPTION

ISSUES

HOW DOES IT MEASURE?

Heat Burns – subjective user defined

3rd party Applications

PHONE

HEATING

PHONE

HEATING

HOW TO AVOID?

• SDK activity is managed in light of the temperature of

the device, if need be:

• Skip internet connection

• Disable sensors

PHONE HEATING

GPS ICON

• Minimize your use of GPS:

• Listen (passive) to GPS state and use that data

• Run GPS only when screen is off

• Run GPS for short period of time

• If you are not essential:

Don’t be there!

• Run efficiently in the background

RUNNING APPS`

PRIVACY

• Legal

• Policy

• User perception

• Intelligent sampling!

– Sample according to application’s needs

– Use location data from other running apps

– Escalate from low power to GPS only when

needed

• Overcome and fix sample errors

• Minimize battery and data consumption

• Manage users’ perceptions

SDK recap

• Geo-fencing

• Better foreground

& single location

USING KITLOCATE IN YOUR CODE

• Periodic location

• Social

• Movement detection

• Push notification platform (Cloud and SDK)

• Remote Geo Fence management (Cloud)

Thank you

Dan Atzmon dan@Kitlocate.com

Hadar Dubinhadar@KitlLocate.com