iPhone indoor location based app

Question

I am researching how to create an app for my work that allows clients to download the app (preferably via the app store) and using some sort of wifi triangulation/fingerprints be able to determine their location for essentially an interactive tour.

Now, my question specifically is what is the best route to take for the iPhone? None of the clients will be expected to have jail broken iPhones.

To my understanding this requires the use of the wifi data which is a private api therefore not meeting the app store requirements. The biggest question I have is how does American Museum of Natural History get away with using the same technology, but still available on the app store?

if you're unfamiliar with American Museum of Natural History interactive tour app, see here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amnh-explorer/id381227123?mt=8

Thank you for any clarification you can provide.

Answer 1

I doubt the American Museum is actually using private APIS; you'll probably find the routers that have been setup serve different responses to each other, so the app can detect it's position in the museum.

If you are looking for a cheaper to way to do the same task, you could have signs with QR codes, and use an open source library to let users scan these barcodes as they move through the museum, and update the onscreen content accordingly. On an even more low tech level, you can just tag each area with unique numbers, and distinguish that way.