Tuesday, June 21, 2011

How to Create Indoor Shopping Mall Maps

Google I/O App for Android
For the Google I/O conference this year Google created a pretty cool Android App that included a number of features, including a schedule, details about the sessions, buzz about I/O via a real-time search stream and a conference map.

Google has now open-sourced the code for the app. If you want to create a similar app for a conference you can download the code and adapt it to suit your needs.


One of my favourite presentations from Google I/O this year was Map Your Business Inside Out by Brendan Kenny and Chris Broadfoot of Google. Essentially in the presentation Brendan and Chris demonstrated how the Google Maps API can be used to create indoor maps for large conference centers or shopping malls.

You can view the presentation in full in this video:



In the presentation Brendan and Chris explain how you can attach floor-plan overlays to a Google Map, how you can label the floor-plan and how you can develop custom Street Views for your map.

If you are interested in creating your own indoor map then you might find these resources useful:
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4 comments:

Coldbeans software said...

this link - Introducing the Google Maps Label Library is not readable

Keir Clarke said...

Thanks coldbeans. Link fixed.

dani said...

http://code.google.com/p/storelocator/ is still empty.
When will it be available?

thanks

Anonymous said...

Google recomends this method for creating indoor maps:

http://support.google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1685896&topic=1685871&ctx=topic

The guys in the video are using professional tools for creating indoor maps. Is the result the same? Can I create an indoor map like the guys do in the video and publish it?

The recommended google method doesnt show how to add additional informations like elevators and rooms. I am confused.