Benidorm will have a highly innovative marker system for guiding people

Benidom has requested a grant to apply a marker system for guiding people, visually impaired or not, of maximum innovation and development in Spain, which meets the proposals of its Universal and Tourist Accessibility plans.

Navilens, Mayor Toni Pérez stressed, "is an evolution of QR codes developed by the Murcian company Neosistec to solve information and guidance aspects for people and on which we are going to implement universal applicability."

Navilens are color codes that can be read by smartphones, through a free and free application, over a long distance, on the move and without the need to focus.

Currently smartphones are capable of detecting navilens codes at distances between 4 and 15 meters. The information obtained, Pérez said, “is read by the terminal” and immediately, “it interprets it, the georeference, expands it with the documentation that we want to highlight and transforms it into audio, both in terminals with Android and IOS systems, to be heard ”. The application, the mayor pointed out, "allows the translation of information into the user's language automatically and can even provide a visual message in sign language," which is considered a high-level technological innovation.

The Mobile Vision Research Laboratory of the University of Alicante and the Neosistec company have carried out the development of this technological initiative of maximum innovation to generate a color code that will enclose the information that you want to transfer to the user. It is planned that it will initially detect the location and indicate the address, and can be expanded to the level of audio guides with information on history, heritage and tourist aspects, "or any other information deemed appropriate," said the mayor.

The initial part of the navilens project, Pérez pointed out, "is the implantation in the municipal street of the Old Town, which is an area with a single, mapped platform, to facilitate the location and orientation on the journey through it."

The costs of the implementation and documentation of the system are assumed by Benidorm City Council, for which it has requested, Pérez recalled, a subsidy in the call for this exercise of subsidies to local entities for the improvement of the conditions of accessibility to the environment physicist of the Vice Presidency and the Department of Equality and Inclusive Policies of the Generalitat Valencia for an amount of € 19,946.85, "which represents 50% of the total budget for the implementation of navilens in the Old Town in Benidorm and that amounts to 39,893'70 euros ”.

Navilens codes are already used in the packaging of a multinational food grains company, the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority in its bus stop system and subway stations, and in some Spanish cities such as Murcia (where Neosistec tested its codes and application for the first time), Madrid, Barcelona or Córdoba ,.

Finally, the mayor highlighted that "it is a national technology with the involvement of the University of Alicante", pointing out "the simplicity of use" as well as the wide range of possibilities that Benidorm inaugurates with the Navilens codes for their applicability, "thanks to ease of capturing codes and their applicability also in museums, exhibitions and other activities ”. For the mayor of Benidorm, “the ease of reporting information, via audio and in the recipient's language, will be decisive to expand the range of possibilities and report for Benidorm a higher concept of the safest, most sustainable and innovative Smart Tourist Destination level. ”.