Abstract
The development of techniques and systems for indicating routes in outdoor and indoor spaces has received a great deal of attention. While outdoor route planning is based on criteria such as the shortest, fastest route, and the least number of turns, indoor route planning is primarily focused on accessibility and safety. Routing systems for indoor spaces have become the focus of many researchers due to significant differences that make indoor routing is more complex than outdoor routing. An indoor environment is complex, which makes it difficult to find a route due to closed corridors, multiple floors, and other indoor features. Because of the present global scenario following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, indoor routing has become increasingly crucial. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and RFID are among the technologies used for indoor routing. For these technologies to help and guide users to the optimal route to their chosen destinations, they require accurate information, appropriate processing and modeling, and route density monitoring to ensure social distancing. In this paper, a new multi-user routing algorithm for indoor spaces is proposed. It has been adapted to the need for social distancing, and is based on multiple users, allowing more than one user to take the route or separate routes at one time without causing congestion on the same route. Despite the complexity of the system, the evaluation indicated that the proposed algorithm successfully controlled the flow of moving objects while ensuring social distancing and maintaining low costs. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).