Nokia planning Indoor Positioning

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 24th September 2008
Comments (18) Stumble
Nokia's Indoor Positioning system is still under construction, but may well show up on the Beta Labs site in the near future.

Nokia's Indoor Positioning system is still under construction, but may well show up on the Beta Labs site in the near future.

If, like me, you've been cursed since birth with the worst sense of direction since Columbus decided he'd found India then you'll be pleased to hear that Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is taking GPS somewhere it's never been before: indoors.

According to a post on the Nokia Conversations blog quoted by The Register, Nokia is currently in the early development stages for an indoor analogue to the Global Positioning System used in many of its phones to provide mapping and navigation facilities.

Built around as-yet unknown technologies – Nokia will only go so far as to say the system is “scalable and can be easily rolled out” – the new technology will allow for point-to-point directions while inside a mapped building.

Dubbed Indoor Positioning, the system is currently being trialled in around forty Nokia buildings worldwide, along with some unofficial maps of shopping centres, airports, and university buildings. From this we can gather the main market for the technology – and an idea of who would be fitting the bill for the not-inexpensive manual mapping required to get such a system working.

The company is also planning a small-scale commercial trial later this year in conjunction with a shopping centre based in Helsinki to “explore how revenue could be generated by this service.”

The team behind the technology see the Indoor Positioning system being useful when you need to find “your seat at a football stadium, or that store you want to visit in a shopping centre,” and even go as far as foreseeing the system being used to “[find] a product in a supermarket.” I have to say, with the amount of use the GPS in my N95 gets I'm looking forward to the day when I get to play with the indoor version, which might not be too far in the future: the team has revealed that the app is “being considered for Beta Labs,” the Nokia site which provides pre-release versions of applications for its smartphones.

Would you find indoor location and mapping a useful tool built-in to your 'phone, or are you – unlike me – blessed with the uncanny ability to find your way in unfamiliar surroundings without a technological crutch? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Quote ChaosDefinesOrder 24th September 2008, 13:12
while gimmicky, I can definitely see a real world application for this in places like supermarkets - it's frustrated me many a time when things get moved around in stores so the thing I'm looking for is the other side of the store from where it used to be!

Seeing as it's Nokia and their most recent phones have data matrix decoders pre-installed on their most recent handsets, the stadium (or theatre) side of things could have the seat position encoded on the ticket, then read off on the handset to give directions tied in with this system...
Quote whisperwolf 24th September 2008, 13:21
I can sort of see this turning people's homes into a sort of old text based adventure game

"you are in YOUR LOUNGE. There are exits to the north (kitchen), east (hall). you see a TV, xbox and a snarling monster (Mother in Law)."
Quote theevilelephant 24th September 2008, 13:48
hmm, im guessing something using fixed wifi signals and digital building map as a sort of gps system?
Quote will. 24th September 2008, 13:48
Finally, I will never get lost on the way to my bathroom ever again!
Quote ChaosDefinesOrder 24th September 2008, 14:03
Quote:
Originally Posted by whisperwolf
I can sort of see this turning people's homes into a sort of old text based adventure game

"you are in YOUR LOUNGE. There are exits to the north (kitchen), east (hall). you see a TV, xbox and a snarling monster (Mother in Law)."

"You have been eaten by a Grue (cat) Game Over"
Quote mclean007 24th September 2008, 14:18
I hope it's better than the GPS in the N95 - my N95 8GB is absurdly slow (up to 2 minutes) to lock on, even in open outdoor spaces. It will rarely lock at all if I'm moving, which is really frustrating, as I have to stand there looking like a proper plum waiting for it to lock before I can get on the move. Normally keeps locked on once it gets a lock though. How do you find yours Gareth?
Quote Gareth Halfacree 24th September 2008, 14:33
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
How do you find yours Gareth?
Mine's pretty good - sub-30 second lock, although that's with A-GPS and network assist enabled. Interestingly, I've noticed that Google Maps has a better time getting a lock than Nokia Maps - to the point that I'll often load Google Maps so that the GPS cache has an entry in it before exiting and starting the Location Tagger application.

Mine's the 8GB, too - which firmware are you running? 20.0.0.16 (from memory) introduced some GPS fixes, and there's a new one out (30.0.0.something) - dunno what that offers, though.
Quote Langer 24th September 2008, 14:52
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaosDefinesOrder
"You have been eaten by a Grue (cat) Game Over"

Nuh-Uh... I brought my light.

Personally I wouldn't give you 1 zorkmid for this technology.
Quote mrb_no1 24th September 2008, 14:58
just to add to what gareth and mclean are talking about. A mate of mine had a n95 and gps was turd until firmware updates and nokia software updates were applied, it then became a very usable tool that considering it was a mobile phone imo rivalled dedicated sat navs in cars.

i use googlemaps on my iphone3g and provided signal is strong from 02, then it works really well, otherwise it suffers from a delayed update.

as for the news, nifty app but will feature limited use until loads of buildings have been added.

peace

fatman
peace
Quote metarinka 24th September 2008, 16:04
nifty app I could see it's uses for things like malls and college campuses that have large buildings with many floors. Not too hard to coordinate this with other phones so that you could find your friends at a party or bar.
Quote Cupboard 24th September 2008, 17:32
I can see a problem with multiple floors but this could be really useful. If you were in a shopping centre around lunchtime, and the phone "knew" you hadn't had lunch then it could start showing special lunch offers :)
Quote Gareth Halfacree 24th September 2008, 19:15
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cupboard
If you were in a shopping centre around lunchtime, and the phone "knew" you hadn't had lunch then it could start showing special lunch offers :)
It wouldn't surprise me if location-sensitive advertising was what Nokia had in mind when it talks about "commercial tests" in Helsinki.
Quote B3CK 25th September 2008, 01:29
I kinda doubt this would take the approach of, where an item would be located in a store. Even if the store owners got the service of adding their inventory in for free, (customers tagging); they wouldn't want it as most stores spend way too much time/revenue in organizing their stores to optimize impulse buys.
Kinda the same way the app for the new android os "go cart" can help to locate an item your vicinity by just looking at a barcode with your camera, in store location probably wouldn't be viable. While, finding the store this way, and pricing can be extremly helpful, in store directions just don't seem to be very helpful, other than say a superstore that might tell you what area to find it in, ie apperal, organics, beer/wine.
But I do like the ability to find other phones, ie track the kids down. Also would be very helpful for finding what side of the mall to park on for easy access to store "X".
Or casino mapping to find where slots are, bathrooms, showrooms. Or even large convention centers to find the "blue" room would be helpful as well, but then that's what the employee lackeys are for right?
Quote Amon 25th September 2008, 03:38
I wouldn't permit the mapping of my buildings if I were a business owner. I'd half-hazard a guess that many others wouldn't, either.
Quote johnmustrule 25th September 2008, 06:49
Society progresses, yet all we can think of is how to enable stupid people.
Quote Gareth Halfacree 25th September 2008, 07:00
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amon
I wouldn't permit the mapping of my buildings if I were a business owner. I'd half-hazard a guess that many others wouldn't, either.
Interesting. Why, pray tell?

I'm thinking here specifically of shopping centres - which, in every one I've been to, have a floor plan posted at regular intervals. I'm also thinking of airports, which also have floor plans posted around the place. And universities, which... you get the idea.

I'm curious as to exactly what sort of business you're thinking of running where hiding the layout from the customer is a good idea. Casino, perhaps?
Quote Cthippo 25th September 2008, 20:29
Our hospital has a working version of this called Versus. All the sdtaff, the patients, and even some of the equipment have tags that can be tracked by IR sensors and there are boards in the nurses stations so at a glance you can see that Dr. Smith is in the supply closet with nurse Jones again. Honestly, I'm not really sure how useful it is as everyone carries internal cell phones and can ususally be reached immediatly on those.
Quote mrplow 25th September 2008, 20:35
as usual technology follows star trek
'computer locate wife'
'your wife is in the back bedroom with your brother'
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