Bhanu Rekha
Executive Editor
[email protected]
Remember the marauder's map that harry potter religiously used at hogwarts to check on every classroom, every hallway, every corner of the castle, to identify and track the movements of every inmate in real time? If you brushed it aside as another fantasy gizmo of the famed wizardry school, its time to sit up and take stock of the reality! Location technology is already there and is promising more!! Here's a low down on the trends in location technology and what to expect in the near future…
From very early days, human beings have looked at the sky for two things – to know the approximate time and approximate location. These two things go with us wherever we go. Relatively recent developments like mobilisation of the Internet, wireless technologies, GPS/GNSS and the rise of smartphone, increasingly oblige us to reconsider the relation between the Web and the social realm. Computing is now off the desktop and into the world. More and more people have mobile access to the Internet on the street, in the park, in a shopping mall and are reorienting themselves in a geographical way. This shift enforces the importance of 'being somewhere', as the accessible digital data adapts itself to the geographical location of the user.
STATE OF LOCATION TECHNOLOGY SPACE
GPS in smartphones – Originally designed for defence applications, GPS has gotten much broader coverage in consumer application in the last two decades; and that's today the anchor for most of the location systems worldwide. Other GNSS systems like GLONASS, Galileo and Compass are expected to increase the coverage worldwide. On the other end, smartphone is already the Swiss knife of the digital age – a quick flick of the finger can transform it into a camcorder, Web browser, gaming device or a music player, doing away the need to carry individual gadgets. Smartphone is beginning to displace another stand-alone device – the GPS receiver – as a convenient way for drivers to get directions to unknown destinations. Leading PND manufacturers like Garmin and Tom Tom have released their smartphone versions to stay afloat in the market. Buoyant over the sales of mobile versions, Garmin registered 20% revenue increase in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to 2010. In contrast, ABI Research portrayed a grim future for PNDs in a recent study. Over-inflated shipments generated by ‘price wars’ have created a false impression of market strength, the report said and added that cellular navigation and telematics market is forecast to reach over 500 million subscribers/ downloads in 2016. Live traffic updates that come along with these versions are adding value to the drivers to optimise their routes and save time. In the US, more than 40 percent of all smartphone owners use their mobile devices to get turn-by-turn directions, according to data from Compete, a Web analytics firm. For iPhone users, the figure is even higher, at about 80 percent.
Indoor location – The accuracy of GPS/GNSS cannot be guaranteed in urban and indoor environments and emergency operators were the first to experience this limitation. GPS then evolved into A-GPS, or Assisted GPS, which used the device's GPS chip and cellular network. However, A-GPS was not available for commercial LBS services due to the cost of the operator's network. As a result, Wi- Fi geolocation became an alternative technology. For example, 75% of iPhone devices use Wi-Fi geolocation and not GPS to locate the device.
Wi-Fi location enables 20 m accuracy where Wi-Fi access points exist. Bluetooth is the micro-level technology that is being deployed inside malls, etc., so bluetooth enabled phones can leverage the services. RFID is promising, but often, phones don't have RFID chips/tags in them.
Several such technologies are being pitched as panaceas, but most industry experts believe that a hybrid of multiple location technologies like Wi-Fi, bluetooth, RFID and locating sensor technologies like accelerometers, gyroscopes, MEMS will provide ubiquitous and accurate indoor positioning. One such hybrid technique that is talked about is the triangulation of RFID, Wi-Fi and Near Field Communication (NFC). However, the success of these applications will depend on the pervasive availability of the location technologies that enable them. "Indoor location, though currently expensive, is already used in some applications with high potential cost savings (for example, tracking wafers at semiconductor fabrication plants) or high criticality (like hospitals). As in many other mobile technologies, consumer applications of indoor location will be the area that drives the price down and gets the technologies into mainstream acceptance. Once that happens, it's not an exaggeration to state that the impact on enterprise mobile applications will be at least as large as the impact we saw with GPS," says Tristian E. Lacroix of indoorlbs.com.
Indoor Mapping – Just as giant companies like Navteq, TeleAtlas, Google and Microsoft have meticulously mapped the outdoors, a growing number of companies are creating Internet and mobile guides to malls, downtown walkways, big airports and other indoor places where people congregate. As people spend 80-90% of their time indoors, indoor mapping adds lot of value and has a potential to be big LBS market. This is a huge undertaking, given the vast amounts of indoor space waiting to be plotted and entered into navigation databases, but significant progress is being made. However, indoor navigation isn't without problems. Indoor-mapping sites and apps often depend on GPS/GNSS technology, which tends to be less dependable indoors. Related technologies like triangulation using cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, can be similarly imprecise and/or outdated. To avoid these issues, companies are pursuing photo stitching and tone mapping techniques for 2D indoor mapping, buoyant with billions of real world photographs shared on applications like Facebook, Picasa, Flickr and Color.
Geospatial major Trimble has gone a step ahead in optimally using a fusion of technologies for capturing spatial data of indoor and other GPS/GNSS denied areas of all sizes and locations. It provides both LiDAR and spherical video of a facility, enabling the creation of accurate, real-life representations (maps, models) of interior spaces and all of its contents. The maps created are geolocated, meaning that the real world positions of each area of the building and its contents are known. Google, Nokia and Bing are other big players foraying into indoor mapping domain.
NFC and indoor navigation – Advances in technologies like near field communication (NFC) are enabling accurate and affordable indoor navigation. Through a series of NFC tags placed at strategic points around a building or complex, visitors using their NFC-enabled phone with an embedded indoor navigation application can easily find their way around an unfamiliar indoor environment.
On entering a building, a visitor checks in by tapping their phone to an entry tag and inputs details of the location within the building they want to get to, for example a room number. A layout of the building is then downloaded to the NFC Internal app on the visitor's phone and this then also calculates the best way to get to their destination – in much the same way as an outdoor satellite navigation system would. The system could also be integrated with a phone's internal GPS facility, allowing users to plot their route to a specific point in a building from any location.
One of the biggest problems for indoor navigation is the lack of indoor mapping standards. In a road network, it is clear where paths lead but building interiors may need more attention, especially large open areas. Also, there are no standards to represent characteristics specific to indoor spaces. Rooms, stairs, elevators, and exits are some that come immediately to mind.
Augmented reality and location – Combining real images with archival material, simulations, text overlays or other media, augmented reality-as its name impliestakes what's really there and adds to it. When implemented on a mobile device, the technology uses location data from the phone's GPS/GNSS receiver and orientation information from its compass to superimpose data on the screen image generated by the phone camera. Pointing your phone camera at a restaurant could bring up an overlay of its menu or online reviews. Pointing at a store could summon coupons and weekly specials. Analysts say augmented reality could become a killer app for smartphones because it perfectly exploits their greatest asset: location-specific mobility.
Touted as the Holy Grail for marketers, media and advertising companies are trying out this emerging technology in combination with LBS, which they see as a promising new way to deliver content and marketing. Layar, a Dutch company is pioneering this innovation with Layar Reality Browser and its early adopters include National Geographic, the Rolling Stones and Italy's Culture Ministry. Recently, Layar announced that it's making its platform available to all developers of iOS apps, opening the door for a lot more innovation.
Sensor based positioning – Sensor based positioning is catching up like wildfire. Inertial sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers are being deployed in mobile devices which allow relative positioning from a known initial position. Also, inertial positioning can be used to complement other indoor positioning systems. For example, 3D-motion climbing up a staircase, steps and floor changes can easily be detected in vertical position. According to Tristian, gyroscopes will become ubiquitous in smartphones because gyros can support new user interface modes, perform indoor navigation and enable augmented-reality applications that overlay information about a target when a phone's digital camera is pointed at it.
According to a new study from IMS Research, the market for gyroscopes in mobile handsets is forecast to grow by 150% between 2010 and 2011. The firm forecasts that annual shipments of gyroscopes in mobile handsets will increase to over 200 million by 2014, capturing over one third of the smartphone market.
The 6 axis motion sensing gyroscopes and accelerometers make more sophisticated use cases possible as well. Motion sensors will play a role in indoor navigation in places; the presence of an accelerometer and gyroscope would allow a device to effectively sense people's steps and their direction. The hope among market players is to provide accurate location data within 1 meter. The market is still years from developing the algorithms required to accurately process or the maps detailed enough to utilise the sensor data, but there is obviously enormous interest in the topic, says Tristian.
APPLICATIONS
Location Based Services
One of the most powerful ways to personalise mobile services is location enablement. A location-based service draws on location information of the user to provide traffic information, track the fleet, emergency services or to look up price comparisons for nearby stores. Though LBS is in vogue for a while now, the recent surge in smartphone apps and social media that use location information is boosting the LBS market. According to ABI Research, the market for wireless location-based applications is expected to reach $ 14.5 billion in 2014.
Identifying the trends for 2011, leading mobile LBS provider Telmap indicates that driving and navigation will get enriched with road and driving related information from the local community – speed cameras, police traps, traffic jams, road closures and road incidents. On another front, tracking is out and sharing is in. Users prefer to share their location than allow others to know where they are all the time.
As quality mapping is the basis for LBS, many providers are turning to free, user-generated maps which may not be up to the task for all LBS. Waze is a fine example for this. Cross referencing and verifications between more sources are being used to guarantee quality level and timeliness of information. As LBS activity is reaching a new crescendo, most of the major brands are considering mobile as an integral part of their advertising campaigns. Slowly but surely, location-based services are going beyond navigation, to serve all of users' day-to-day needs while out-and-about.
Mobile and its relationship with location-based services is becoming a larger part of Google's overall strategy. Disclosing Google's plans, Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Location and Local Services says, "Our strategy is to focus on three areas: exploration and discovery, interactivity, and new perspectives. By making it easier to discover new places, interact with them and glean new information from that interactivity, we hope to take location services to the next level."
The next paradigm for LBS is in providing indoor location services. According to Strategy Analytics, 70% of cellular calls and 80% of data connections originate from indoors. Companies are adopting innovative approaches to enable indoor LBS. While Nokia indoor navigation relies on positioning beacons resulting in 30 cm accuracy, Insiteo uses Wi-Fi infrastructure and special algorithms to process the Wi-Fi signal captured by the phone. Nokia/Navteq already has indoor maps of malls and airports, hence, indoor location and navigation is a natural progression for the company. Developers believe NFC has the potential to be the socially-aware champion for location services and enable micro-location and indoor LBS on a mass scale.
Location Enabled Services
With easy access, location is the hottest tech trend now. Apple developed the first location-enabled application and today, there is a proliferation of location enabled services and applications – ranging from fun apps to utility apps. Today, location is personal and apps are mainstream. Here's a slice of a few popular location-enabled apps and services:
Foursquare et al – 2010 has been the year of check-ins. Users arrived at a venue and checked-in with Foursquare to let family and friends know about their whereabouts and find acquaintances in the vicinity. According to an estimate, Foursquare is the most used location-based app and grew from 500,000 users in March 2010 to 5 million users in December 2010. According to Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare, "With apps becoming mainstream and GPS being available on mobiles, location of people is now known in real time a la Marauder's Map in Harry Potter series."
Other location-based apps like Loopt, Yelp, WHERE and Gowalla are investigating ways to not just let users know when their friends are nearby, but also the offers available in their areas. While there is a peaking demand for such apps, SimpleGeo is cashing on it by making it easy for developers in creating location-aware applications. Skyhook's publicly available Core Engine SDK allows developers to quickly and easily start locationenabling their applications on the platform of their choice.
GeoIQ – GeoIQ is a software based data management, visualisation and analysis platform providing collaborative, browser-based data analysis tools for use by both technical and non-technical users. GeoIQ enables organisations to take quick and intelligent data-driven decisions with no cumbersome training. Refusing to use the word GIS for his product, Andrew Turner, CTO, GeoIQ says, "This is a user-centric approach. We are providing geospatial visualisation and analysis capabilities to people who are not geospatial experts. They don't have to worry about terms like points, polygons shapefiles etc."
GeoCommons – GeoCommons enables users to find, use and share geographic data and maps. One can easily create rich interactive visualisations to solve problems without any experience of using traditional mapping tools.
Waze – Taking location innovation a step ahead, Waze – a social mobile application, provides free turn-byturn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. This app is 100% powered by users and provides real time map and traffic information based on the wisdom of the crowd. One just needs to join the community of drivers in their area and feed in live conditions on the road. The more one drives, the better it gets with goodies and gifts.
Factual – Factual creates large scale, constantly evolving aggregated data on thousands of topics. It takes a new approach in creating, maintaining, managing and perpetuating large datasets and its users are its partners in proliferating data. According to Tyler Bell, Director of Products, "Factual is taking lot of established big data approaches and specific local geoknowledge, combines them together to produce global coverage of businesses and PoIs. It has information about 35 million businesses and PoIs in 35 countries across the world.
SECURITY AND PRIVACY
The news about Apple's iOS4 collecting user's location information sent already wary location users into a tizzy. The ability to locate the position of a user has both pros and cons. According to a survey, about 80% of global consumers are concerned about unauthorised access to personal information and 55% of people using LBS are concerned about loss of privacy.
While technology evolves at a rapid pace opening new avenues and possibilities, law makers around the world are finding it hard to catch up. In the USA, the Federal Trade Commission, in its report, "Protecting consumer privacy in an era of rapid change," explicitly states that precise geolocation information is sensitive and should be subject to greater protection. In Europe, privacy is considered sacrosanct and Google Street View witnessed severe backlash. Earlier, Facebook, AT&T and Verizon too have attracted bad press and law suits for poor security of personal information of their users.
Today, location-aware smartphones collect enormous amounts of data about where people go and what they do. This information can be aggregated with other information to determine 'who they are' with precision and accuracy. Often, location information is more precise than most personal data because users generally cannot lie about their location. The level of available detail and the potential security and privacy risks associated with it will only increase with time, compounding concerns about issues like 'cyber stalking' and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.
Pointing out issues with data handling practices, Francoise Gilbert, Founder, IT Law Group says, "Lack of transparency, failure to meet privacy promises, individual profiling and tracking and lack of appropriate information security measures are just but a few pressing issues." Incidentally, these issues don't apply only to firms that deal with geolocation. As company databases connect customers, employees and vendors to specific locations, most of the companies come under this purview. To avoid law suits, Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, suggests a few good practices for companies to adopt through out their lifecycles. She says, "Companies should begin to identify and protect geolocation data they collect/use if it could be associated with an individual. They should keep the users informed. This will give them the ability to understand how they will be impacted and provide proper disclosures. It is also important to safeguard user data from possible security threats."
With a raft of new regulations in the offing in the US and elsewhere in the world, Kevin Pomfret, Executive Director, Centre for Spatial Law and Policy, says, "Industry should initiate a detailed, fully informed discussion with law makers about location's complexity and potential if they wish to avoid suffering the ill effects of 'the law of unintended consequences'."
Notions of privacy are rooted in culture and vary dramatically from one nation to the next. Says Kevin, "As national governments develop policies that are appropriate for their own legal systems and cultural mores, MNCs need to develop business models that mesh with those policies." Anticipating more technological invasion, it is important for the industry to start addressing issues like intellectual property rights and various kinds of potential liability.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Cheaper devices, greater demand: The prognosis for location industry to penetrate further is quite strong as the cost of embedding location data in portable electronic devices is very low. According to a recent research by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS/GNSS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost by 97 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 940 million units in 2015.
Hybrid solutions: To ensure greater accuracy, technologists are combining several location and connectivity functionalities in one chipset. Hybrid solutions combining AGPS and Wi-Fi are already popular. There are a number of refinements to make the combined CellID / Wi- Fi and GPS work better. "This fusion architecture is being designed to – first, provide location everywhere, and second, provide quality of service based on the application and the context in which location is being used," says Kanwar Chadha, Founder, SiRF & CMO, CSR Plc.
Better access: Access to map data and value-added services using these map data is getting cheaper and eventually will be freely available. Major service providers like Google, Nokia and Apple already provide access free of cost, and they increasingly focus on location as a core business construct.
Context is the crux: With several location enabled apps, the focus is now to enrich user experience by creating context to location. Dennis Crowly of Foursquare says, "Twitter is like 'present tense' service but the real story can be built with the history of it. The challenge to technologists is to create social context, to be able to tell people where they need to go and that is of utmost interest." Enumerating this aspect, Mok Oh, Chief Innovation Officer, WHERE Inc says that there was a time when 'where' function was :
Where x, y, z represented the coordinates on earth and t is time. But today, location is associated with several other attributes and contexts and it is best described as :
Turning to proliferating location enabled applications, Jack Dangermond says, "Social media and real time feeds are part of real time maps. They are creating interesting opportunities and challenges at the same time. The future of GIS will be strong in providing a platform for maps and apps."Multimedia content: After enabling location and adding lot of context to it, developers are looking to create multimedia content with audio and video enablement. To enrich this experience, apps are being made more interactive as well.
CONCLUSION
Location is penetrating everywhere and Web and apps are not the only ways. It is also getting into enterprise applications. "You don't have to go and buy a GIS for that. You just buy Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (OBIEE) or IBM's Cognos and they have geospatial capability. You don't have to link it to your GIS. You can geocode and people won't even know," says Geoff Zeiss, Technology Evangelist, Autodesk. Signing off, Kanwar succinctly puts it, "Ultimately, you don't have to worry about location because it will be embedded in almost everything we do."
