What's next for the GPS?

A decent article came out from the news service this week on the future of the GPS, and where the technology can go from here. While we all await more features, longer batery life and better maps on the existing units, there are a whole lot of things that may be in the wings waiting for us. Reasearchers say that the GPS technology, "Can be used to guide visitors through museums. Other innovators plan to use it to beam cell-phone ads to specific locations, to enable stores and restaurants to lure hip wireless customers who are strolling in their neighborhoods."

Continuing, "The GPS already is essential gear for sailors and wilderness hikers and a navigation aid for millions of drivers. You're likely to see more new uses soon, tech futurists said, thanks to miniaturization, higher accuracy and falling prices.

GPS "is in so many different areas. It transcends a lot of barriers,'' said Jessica Myers, a spokeswoman for Garmin, a major GPS maker based in Olathe, Kan."

Siemans is looking at the GPS from the mobile phone standpoint, envisioning that location aware phones have a whole lot to offer users and, well advertisers. Humm, not sure about locaiton based phone spam, but "Siemens envisions a sort of electronic Post-it note on your cell phone. In addition to touting neighborhood retailers, it could help guide visitors through cities and museums. Information about important buildings or a museum's artworks and exhibits would pop up when the viewer stepped in front of them."

Other uses include taking the GPS display and making it more minaturized, and dropping the readout into a pair of glasses or goggles. "Steven Feiner, a computer science professor at Columbia University in New York, is developing goggles with a GPS receiver in them that tracks the user's position and displays information about what the user is looking at on the goggles' lenses. A prototype details the history of Columbia's buildings as the wearer walks by.

Feiner thinks his so-called "augmented reality'' system could be used to display the locations of underground utilities for construction workers. Or to show the utility systems -- and possibly the identities of tenants -- in buildings from the exterior. Or to give pedestrians the equivalent of in-car navigation maps.

The goggles soon could be made as small as conventional eyeglasses, Feiner said."

Didn't RoboCop have this ability to look at buildings and know information about it?

Another use might be personal tracking of people. "The radio-based system that tracks Martha Stewart and other federal detainees sets off an alarm if the person leaves home but it can't find him or her." We all are familiar with these ankle bracelets, but what about something a bit more subtle?

"Another innovator would like to put a GPS under your skin. The system, intended for wayward loved ones -- or anyone who's deemed to need tracking -- is about the size of a pacemaker. Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., developed a working prototype two years ago but shelved it because of high costs.

If a client wanted the product, the company said, it could miniaturize the implantable system to the size of a grain of rice."

Once the device is the size of a grain of rice, there are lots of things one could do..... one can only imagine.

via MecuryNews

August 23, 2005

What's next for the GPS?