Deakin University is prototyping IoT initiatives to help students navigate campus.

Chief digital officer William Confalonieri said the University is pursuing a "smart campus" strategy that will act as an umbrella for several IoT initiatives.

A recent upgrade of its campus wireless network by Dimension Data has in part made the adoption of IoT technically possible.

One of the first IoT initiatives - currently in prototype - uses wireless access points to triangulate the position of all connected devices on campus, and in particular, determine the owner of each device.

“Using this data, we’ve been able to develop a map on all the students’ locations in real-time,” Confalonieri said.

“We can then provide the students a map of the campus and show them areas which are the least crowded.”

The University has also been working on a ‘request for assistance’ app, where a student could interact with support staff, and using their location, “assist the student to navigate their way around the campus”.

“All of these things have been tested based on the proximity and location services enabler,” Confalonieri said.

Confalonieri believed IoT could assist in the University maintaining its student satisfaction status.

It could also be combined with other technologies and projects.

“For example, we’re working on a big project to enhance our augmented reality capabilities across all of our services," he said.

“Combining the capabilities of IoT with augmented reality will allow us to put that digital layer on top of our physical services, which will provide a huge benefit to our students.”