Indoor mapping is becoming far more than a tool for navigating buildings. Thamba Tharmalingam, CEO of MapsPeople, explains why spatial intelligence will become fundamental to smart workplaces and what that means for AV integrators.
Ahead of his appearance at WORKTECH26 London, where he will explore how AI and connected technologies can create more responsive workplaces, Tharmalingam speaks to Anna Mitchell about the growing importance of spatial data, the problems created by disconnected systems and the opportunities for AV integrators to extend their services.
Anna Mitchell: How has indoor mapping evolved beyond simply helping people find their way from A to B?
Thamba Tharmalingam: People think of indoor mapping as wayfinding, getting from point A to point B. But today, in the age of AI, that’s not the right way of looking at it.
Every physical asset has a system of record. If you go back 50 or 100 years, that was the architectural drawing, and later the CAD file. That information would be used from time to time to update buildings, renovate or rebuild. The use cases were limited enough that a paper drawing was sufficient.
What we do at MapsPeople is build the digital data layer of your physical asset. What used to be on paper in a drawer somewhere in the basement is now a digital version of your building.
Indoor navigation is one of the use cases, but think more broadly about IoT, smart printers, asset tracking, HVAC, fire routes, monitoring, security and access control. The number of use cases is growing fast, especially with AI.
AI agents are now interacting with data about buildings, from smart lighting and HVAC to access control. To prepare your building for AI, you need to create a digital representation of it. AI can’t act on a building it doesn’t understand.
And we’re not necessarily talking about a 3D model that’s visually designed for human consumption. It’s about having a data set that allows all these different systems and applications to understand and interact with the building.
AM: What other workplace systems are increasingly expected to connect with that spatial data?
TT: Today’s standard use cases include booking, security, access control, visitor experience, guest experience and workforce experience.
But there are many more use cases emerging. If you go into some buildings today, robots are vacuuming and cleaning. They all require some understanding of the physical environment to navigate.
We also have clients experimenting with drone delivery. You’re going to be interacting with systems and devices that require a good spatial understanding of your physical asset.
Think about a technician arriving to repair an HVAC system on the 15th floor. Where do they park? Which entrance do they use? Which lift do they take? Where is the equipment? What access permissions do they need?
All that information can be connected through a common digital understanding of the building.
The same goes for AI assistants. Imagine asking yours for a room for six near your team, with a working video bar. To answer, the agent needs to know where every room is, what’s in it and whether it’s working. That’s spatial data.
And it shouldn’t stop at an answer. In an agentic workflow, the assistant books the room, sets the lighting and temperature, registers your visitor at reception and raises a ticket if the video bar fails. Every one of those steps depends on knowing exactly where things are.
Our roots are in mapmaking, dating back to 1897, but what we’re building today is a spatial intelligence platform for the AI world.
Whether it’s a cleaning robot, a technician arriving to carry out maintenance or a use case we haven’t thought of yet, the aim is to make the building AI-ready.
AM: If an AV integrator is working in a building that already uses indoor mapping, what should they understand about that system before designing or installing AV?
TT: First and foremost, the layout. That matters quite a bit when installing an AV system.
Having that information digitally available allows you to experiment with angles, distances, heights, projection and other considerations. You can model different scenarios and move things around before physically deploying somebody to the site.
Another example is a client we have in London that deploys large amounts of AV and office technology globally.
From its control tower in London, it can monitor a particular projector on the 17th floor of an office in Rio de Janeiro and identify that a component is approaching the end of its life.
Using automation, it can order the replacement part, make sure it’s available, identify the right technician and book a service appointment.
The spatial intelligence layer isn’t the only thing enabling that, but it can streamline and simplify the workflow, particularly when you’re doing these things at scale.
If you’re installing a speaker in a dental office, I don’t think you need spatial intelligence. But when you’re dealing with large enterprises, it can have a huge impact on how efficiently you work.
AM: Are there practical decisions an AV integrator might make differently if they have access to accurate mapping and location data?
TT: Absolutely. I’ll give you an example of a client we had in New York.
They were installing AV equipment in a large conference room. A contractor came in, surveyed the room, installed the equipment and left.
What they hadn’t considered was that the floor above was an executive floor. When there were large meetings or conferences, the vibrations from the bass could be heard upstairs.
The contractor had surveyed the room they were working in, but hadn’t considered what was adjacent to it, above it, behind it or beneath it. A shared spatial data layer would have shown them straight away that the executive floor sat directly above.
With our spatial intelligence system, you can go a step further and interact with the building using AI. Let’s say you’re thinking about converting a conference room into a large theatre. You can ask the platform what you should be considering.
It can help you understand what’s around that room, but also things like access. If you’re going to have large numbers of people moving through the corridors, will that create problems for other offices? Is that the right way to design the space?
We have clients already piloting this, interacting with our platform before they think about taking down a wall or renovating a room. They can ask questions in natural language and get information about the implications and considerations.
That’s where things are heading. AI is playing a huge role in how we look at physical assets, and many of these applications are already here today.
AM: What problems arise when mapping, AV, access control and other workplace systems are designed separately rather than as part of one connected environment?
TT: Of all the reasons customers buy our platform, I would say this is the biggest.
When different systems use different data sets to design things, they don’t work well together. You don’t have interoperability. For employees, that shows up as an experience tax: walking to a room that’s double-booked, or finding the screen doesn’t work when you get there.
Imagine an AV integrator installing and servicing projectors throughout a building. They have one understanding of the building’s layout. Then an electrical contractor comes in to do the wiring and has a different understanding of where everything is.
When those two things exist on separate platforms, changes made by the AV team might not be reflected in the information used by the electrical team.
One of the problems our platform solves is providing a common data layer that defines the building.
Every door, room, ceiling, light, IoT sensor, fire extinguisher, electrical outlet and HVAC unit can be identified with its location, geometry and specifications. That data can be enriched, but everyone is working from the same underlying information.
That’s also what makes a smart building smart. A temperature or occupancy reading from an IoT sensor means little on its own. Once you know which room it’s in, what the room is used for and what else is in it, it becomes data that other systems, and AI, can act on.
If somebody is shutting down an electrical panel on the 19th floor, for example, that information can become available to other people who might be working in the same area.
We like to think of the building as a living unit. It’s not just about visualisation or a map for people to look at. It’s about enabling workflows and AI agents to interact with the building.
AM: How important is real-time data? Can this spatial information reflect things like occupancy, room availability and access?
TT: Very. We have many clients using it for occupancy, traffic, security and access.
In an office, that might mean a lobby display or room panel showing which meeting rooms are actually free right now, and guiding people straight to them.
Over time, that data can also feed machine learning models. Once you understand how each floor is actually used, you can forecast demand, right-size your space, and heat, light and clean only the areas people are using.
Outside the office, stadiums are a huge use case, where access for press, VIPs and fans has to be managed in real time.
From a central control room, operators can monitor where people and assets are and how crowded different areas are.
If there’s an incident, you may need to change access permissions, open or close particular routes or divert people to different areas.
These are all things that spatial intelligence and real-time data can support.
AM: Who typically takes responsibility for maintaining this mapping and spatial data within an organisation?
TT: Broadly, there are three categories, and I’m seeing them come together more than ever before.
Traditionally, it was facilities. Then, particularly after Covid, there was a shift towards HR and workplace experience.
Now we’re seeing IT become much more involved.
IT wants to make sure there’s a correct data set and understanding of the building. The end users might be procurement, HR, contractors or facilities, but IT increasingly wants to manage the underlying information centrally.
As the number of use cases grows, it becomes an IT headache.
They want one spatial intelligence understanding of their asset that they can manage and monitor centrally. That makes it much easier to support all the different applications that are emerging.
That means spatial data has to fit into the tech stack IT already runs: identity and access, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, service management, the building management system and the IoT platforms. It shouldn’t be another silo; it should be a service every other system can call through an API. That’s good news for AV integrators, because IT is often the team they already work with.
AM: As AV integrators expand into workplace experience platforms and room booking systems, could mapping become another service they offer?
TT: Yes. The more integrated you are, the easier the proposition is for a customer.
Think about it from the client’s perspective. I don’t want to buy booking software from one company, a booking panel from another, a digital display from somebody else, access control from another supplier and then a separate solution to help people navigate to that room.
If AV integrators can provide more end-to-end solutions, that’s a much more compelling proposition.
Wayfinding is also a natural fit with what integrators already install. Digital signage, lobby kiosks and room panels all become far more useful when they’re connected to a live map of the building.
It changes the economics, too. Hardware is largely a one-off sale, but the spatial data layer has to be kept current as the building changes. That gives integrators an ongoing service and a reason to stay close to the client.
And they don’t have to build everything themselves. They can bring together an ecosystem of partners.
A good example is Ricoh. Ricoh provides certain AV technologies and integration services, but it also brings in partners. We provide a white-label solution through the Ricoh ecosystem.
Ricoh doesn’t have to build the mapping technology. It identifies the right technology, integrates it with its existing solutions and offers it to the customer.
That makes things much easier for the end client.
But there’s a balance. Booking software, mapping software and AV hardware installation are all very different disciplines.
Integrators have to decide what they should do themselves and where they need specialist partners.
If you’re talking about Microsoft Places integration, Google Workspace, Google Maps integration from outdoors to indoors, access control and security, you’re getting into enterprise-level requirements.
At that point, you should probably partner with a company that specialises in those technologies. That’s exactly the kind of partnership we’re building with integrators.
AM: Looking ahead, will a digital understanding of physical space become as fundamental to smart workplace technology as the network is today?
TT: One hundred per cent.
The entire thesis behind spatial intelligence for us is that the XYZ coordinates of any point within a building will have far more value and applications in the future than they do today.
Think about everything from sensors, heat, light and temperature to autonomous robots and the tasks they’re going to perform inside buildings.
I think we’re in the early stages of how physical space is going to transform and how it should be translated into a smart technology stack.
A lot of the applications are only starting to emerge because of AI.
We’re already comfortable walking into an office and seeing a robotic vacuum cleaner. But think about all the other enterprise applications that could emerge as autonomous technology becomes more capable.
So, yes, I think this will be a fundamental layer of the smart workplace.
I prefer the term AI-ready to future-ready because the future is difficult to define. AI is here today, and we can already define what it means to get your workplace AI-ready.
The role of spatial intelligence in creating more connected and responsive workplaces will be explored further at WORKTECH26 London, where Tharmalingam will join Raquel Villacana, head of HP Collaboration Solutions WW Marketing at HP, for a panel discussion titled Beyond the Experience Tax: Creating the Intelligent, Adaptive Workplace.
The session will examine how disconnected systems and fragmented workplace tools create an invisible ‘experience tax’ for employees and organisations. Bringing together perspectives on AI, spatial intelligence, connected devices and building technology, the discussion will consider how these systems can work together to create workplaces that respond to changing needs rather than operate as isolated technologies.
WORKTECH26 London takes place on 17 November 2026 at Together, 88 Wood Street, London.
More information and tickets