A Unified AR Navigation Framework for Indoor and Outdoor Environments Using Point Clouds and GPS

Abstract

Indoor navigation remains a critical challenge for existing GPS based systems, particularly within large campuses, warehouses, retail complexes, and industrial facilities. This study introduces a fully integrated navigation framework that seamlessly unifies outdoor GPS based routing with indoor digital-twin navigation using point cloud data. The proposed system, developed in Unity, supports real time localization, augmented reality (AR) based guidance, and hotspot driven pathfinding in complex indoor environments.
Outdoor navigation is powered by GPS and Mapbox APIs for route computation, while indoor navigation employs Matterport generated digital twins combined with point cloud based spatial mapping to achieve high precision localization and mapping. The system autonomously detects transition boundaries between outdoor and indoor zones, dynamically switching navigation modes to maintain continuity.