China Intel IoT Joint Labs (CII Labs) - a research laboratory and technology incubator jointly funded by the Beijing Government, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Intel - recently announced that it had launched a pilot project concerning its indoor precision navigation technology in the Zhongguancun Dragon Electronic City.

The new technology will enable people to locate a store in a big shopping mall, or the exact shelf of goods in a supermarket – and even their car in a large parking lot.

On the same day, CII Labs also gave a presentation concerning its research achievements one year after its foundation, and highlighted its two other key projects, concerning air quality monitoring and Front End Servers - stressing the great potential of the Internet of Things technology.

CII Labs was formally established in the Zhongguancun Science Park in Nov 2012, with the three parties planning to invest 200 million yuan ($32.92 million) to support the institute in research on hardware and software development, and innovative sustainable business models.

Tan Tieniu, director of a key laboratory at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Fang Zhixi, vice-president of Intel and the president of Intel Labs China, are co-presidents of CII Labs.

Edited by Chen Zhilin and Niva Whyman