Indoor Positioning - The Last Few Steps to the Mall’s Restrooms

Forget trying to locate the Mona Lisa at the Louvre… find me the nearest restroom!

If you have kids, you know instantly the panic associated with the words, "Daddy, I have to go…!" Ok, enough said.

So, what can you do about it? Indoor positioning and navigation has been on the back burner when compared to location-based social networking. Matching the technology with data hasn’t exactly been easy to integrate. GPS doesn’t work indoors and RFID doesn’t exactly solve the problem. RF Ultra-wide band (UWB) technology in general has its own issues with deployment and expense (See Q-Track).

Within the last few weeks, I’ve been reading more and more about apps that are getting much closer to being "consumerized." A few weeks ago, we published my interview with Tristian Lacroix on these issues and its a useful review of what’s been going on to solve the indoor positioning challenges. And we’ll soon publish an interview with Point Inside’s Brian Wilson on the deployment of his company’s technology at retailer Meijer that maps this grocer’s store floor and guides customers to specific product aisles. Think about it… no more wondering where to find the Skippy Peanut Butter!

Then, in today’s New York Times, there is an article on an iPhone apps specifically for navigating your way around the Metropolitan Museum Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History, both in New York, as well as museums in other cities. The combination of tour guide and navigation is supremely appealing. Although the article does not specifically mention augmented reality (AR) (see this informative article by Timo Elliot of SAP on AR) as means of either guiding or informing, enhancing these apps with AR can’t be far behind.

And, it should elicit discussion on who pays for these kinds of positioning apps for malls, museums, and other facilities. In addition, should they be linked to social networking apps like Foursquare so that if you "check in" to the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for Chinese Decorative Arts on the 3rd floor of the "Met" your wife will know if you have the kids with you! Anyway, you get the point. The integration of indoor navigation technology with floor maps, tourist information and the means to find your friends is well on its way toward mainstream adoption.

My Black Friday Shopping Map

Yesterday, I took a look at the Walmart maps being offered to shoppers for Black Friday by the Massachusetts store cited in our APB post today. Looking like every other Walmart floor plan that the retailer stamps into the landscape around the country, I got to thinking about how I’d want my "shopping map" to look like. If I were to be lured to the 4:00 a.m. low, low prices, obsequious to the will of the mega-retailers on that fateful day after Thanksgiving, this is how I would want to start my hunt for the ultimate door-busting bargains.

First, I’d want my car navigation system (let’s go with a Garmin…I’m partial to their PNDs) equipped with the locations of every retailer and their hours of operation on BF (yes, Black Friday).

Next, I’d map out the route to each store allowing just enough time to scarf-up the best sale items at each.

However, this is predicated by having a map of each floor plan for each retailer loaded onto my Blackberry (sorry, I’m a business guy…don’t do iPhone schtick). Perhaps we could get the good folks at uLocate to work on this for the Where application.

Next, the retailers would have to allow the floor plans to be tagged with the location of the best sale items. This might be similar to what the rather crude Walmart map provides, but please, we are a bit more sophisticated in our geospatial awareness these days, so let’s have better precision, right? I’m thinking that there should be some RFID device for each item and a shopping cart that synch’s via Bluetooth to my Blackberry to navigate around the store. Whenever the cart passes along the isle with the most sought-after gadgets, my Blackberry provides the alert and I’m directed appropriately.

Having snagged the item from the shelf, I’m then provided with a traffic map of the store floor, whisking my buggy to route around the bulging crowds to the nearest cash register with the fewest in line. This is micro-geography at its finest.

My items are scanned as I zoom past the counter, swipe my credit card, and I’m out the door…on to the next BF adventure.

I’m headed to the parking lot where I’m met with a swarm of hungry, sleep-deprived shoppers, goodness knows where I parked my car. But in the perfect geospatial world, I am directly by voice commands by my PND to the location of my space and my car is automatically unlocked as I approach with a cart-load of gifts, recognizing of course that my bio sensor-equipped vehicle knows my proximal location.

Safely inside, I rev the engine and I’m off to the next store, real-time traffic and weather guiding my every move. And because I’ve integrated my PND with geo-located Twitter feeds, I’m getting updates on new bargains in the vicinity. I’m re-routed as necessary…my Christmas shopping list consulted and advised.

In a perfect world…Have a great Thanksgiving.

Podcast: Hybrid Positioning and Your Future

Hybrid positioning refers to handsets that use GPS and another technology to determine the device’s location. Such solutions use Wi-Fi access points, cell towers, TV towers and their related signals, RFID, Bluetooth as a companion for when GPS is not enough. A recent report suggest growing use of hybrid solutions. What might your future and that of geospatial marketplace look like as these solutions proliferate? Our editors share some scenarios and point out gaps in the existing infrastructure, i.e., places to make money.

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Hybrid Positioning Market Prediction

In a press release I must have missed from last week but which I think is significant, ABI Research offered predictions on the market potential of hybrid positioning systems. That is, when one form of position determination is not available, others must be available on the same handset. Dominique Bonte, ABI’s principal analyst for telematics and navigation (see my podcast interview with him from last August on LBS) states that, "Users expect a seamless and transparent location experience regardless of application or environment…Since no single positioning technology can provide this, the future will be about hybrid positioning systems, combining A-GPS, Cell-ID, Wi-Fi, cellular, motion sensors, and even TV broadcast and proximity technologies such as Bluetooth, NFC and RFID. A-GPS, Wi-Fi and Cell-ID will be the winning combination offering accuracy, availability, interoperability and short fix times at low cost. It will represent 25% of all positioning solutions by 2014. Stand-alone Cell-ID and/or Wi-Fi will remain important in regions with low GPS handset penetration."

So, here are a few questions:

1. What’s the size of the handset or chip set that must be equipped with all of these various positioning options?

2. Will there eventually be a nationwide network of just one or two technologies that win out over the long term?

Podcast: Protecting Ourselves from Geographic Data and Technologies

There’s no question there’s currently an abundance of location information out in the world. How do we “protect ourselves” from that very information and technologies? How much can we rely on automated systems to protect us from the dangers? How much must we do on our own? What types of protection do we not have that should be invented?

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