Nokia, Samsung, Sony and 19 other companies are collaborating on the In-Location Alliance to develop and promote a precise indoor positioning technology.
GPS technology isn’t all that accurate, and it doesn’t work indoors. Right now, determining an exact location within an enclosed space requires external hardware for the purpose of mapping an indoor location. It’s a troublesome task that many companies, like Wifarer, are diligently working on. To help phones better breach the indoors, Nokia has formed an all alliance of 22 different companies to develop accurate indoor positioning technologies for mobile devices.
The In-Location Alliance will develop and promote short-range wireless technology for the purpose of super-precise indoor positioning. For example, a mobile app for the purpose of aiding shoppers could offer a shopper browsing the cereal aisle of a grocery store coupons based on her specific location. Other scenarios may allow the technology to help with finding the one shoe shining booth within a mall as large as The Mall of America.
The alliance is already close to perfecting this technology thanks to Nokia’s head start, which will likely be baked into the alliance’s efforts. In its testing phase, Nokia’s High Accuracy Indoor Positioning Solution (HAIP), which uses Bluetooth 4.0 and minimal power consumption, was able position a mobile device with accuracy of one meter. Through further development and fine tuning, Nokia will be able to position devices within accuracy of a mere 20 centimeters.
“The key criteria for the indoor positioning technology are high accuracy, low power consumption, mobility, and the low cost. The solution has to be easy to implement and easy to use,” Nokia’s Boc Ly wrote in a blog post.
Nokia by itself has already developed the technology for indoor positioning, which raises the question about why the company should even work with other corporations at all. Nokia explains that due to the technicalities, developing the technology for indoor positioning requires different roles including telecom operators, system manufacturers, application developers and handset manufacturers.
There are two hardware components to the technology. A HAIP antennae must be installed in the ceiling, or any area with decent wireless reception. The second component can be installed in a mobile device, or as Ly explains, it can be “made as separate tags, which can be attached to any asset.” The more daunting effort, and where the alliance will really come into play, is to convince every original equipment manufacturer and building owner to install these components in their effort to provide a complete network for pinpoint mapping.
“The alliance members can bring the technology to the market sooner, and also extend the technology in the future and provide new use cases and opportunities,” Ly writes.
The In-Location Alliance, which includes powerhouses like Sony Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Broadcom, outlines its role in three parts:
- Continue working together on system architecture based on a standard based indoor positioning solution.
- Alliance members will prepare and execute pre-commercial pilots and practical demonstrations starting in the second half of 2012.
- Alliance members will brainstorm and evaluate new use cases and new business opportunities based on indoor positioning technology.
Competing technologies exist on a far smaller scale, such as Navizon I.T.S. With demonstrations already set to take place later this year, it may be only a few more years before we’ll be finding the nearest bathroom in an airport using Nokia’s HAIP technology.
Check out the video of Nokia’s HAIP below:
Source : digitaltrends[dot]com
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