The world's most important event in indoor positioning took place at the Evenia hotel in Lloret de Mar between 28 November and 2 December 2021: The International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation 2021 (IPIN 2021). Following the cancellation of IPIN 2020 in Beijing due to the pandemic, IPIN 2021 arrived after two years in which the indoor positioning and indoor navigation community had not been able to meet up.
The UOC hosted the conference, through its Internet Computing & Systems Optimization (ICSO) group, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications. One of the three conference chairs was Dr Antoni Pérez-Navarro, a member of the IN3's ICSO group and the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications. Dr Raúl Montoliu, from Universitat Jaume I, and Dr Joaquín Torres-Sospedra, from UBIK Geospatial Solutions, were the other two co-chairs. ABC4Events acted as the event manager.
IPIN 2021 featured the collaboration of various sponsors: HUAWEI as gold sponsor, MDPI as silver sponsor, and Nexus Geographics as bronze sponsor. In addition, the technical sponsors were the Spanish chapters of the IEEE, the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Society, and the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.
The opening session included words from both the UOC President and the Mayor of Lloret de Mar.
The event was obviously affected by the pandemic, and as such the option to participate online was available. A total of 114 people attended in person (as well as the 3 co-chairs) and 85 did so online. 85 reference papers were presented (36 online) and 41 work-in-progress papers (20 online).
Everyone who presented work has been invited to submit an extended version to the special issue of the journal Sensors, which is ranked in Q1 or Q2 in various JCR categories (the special issue is open to all those who want to submit their work). In addition to the presentations, the event was rounded off with four tutorials on the first day.
There was also a competition, which this year only took place in an off-site format because of the pandemic. Frontiers sponsored the competition prizes, and there is also a research topic open on the topics covered at the event.
In addition to the scientific activities, there were several social events that contributed to fostering exchanges between the participants, including the welcome reception, the networking in the kitchens and the social dinner.
This all provided the opportunity to take stock of the state of the art in indoor positioning and indoor navigation, and allowed the community to come together again after two years, which will hopefully bear new fruit and open up new areas for collaboration in the future.