[gps-talkusers] Fw: Inside out: Google launches indoor maps
- From: "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:43:37 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Dicey
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:05 PM
Subject: Inside out: Google launches indoor maps
Inside out: Google launches indoor maps
Date
March 13, 2013
Asher Moses
Technology Editor
Google Maps indoors
Google has launched indoor maps, allowing users to find their way inside
airports, shopping centres and other large buildings with their mobile devices.
Google Maps indoor venues
Google has launched indoor maps in Australia allowing users to find their way
around inside airports, shopping centres, train stations and other large
buildings using their mobile devices.
Australian engineers at firms such as Navisens, CSIRO and UNSW are leading the
world in developing advanced indoor navigation technology capable of helping
people locate specific products on supermarket shelves, tracking athletes'
performance or guiding the visually impaired.
Google
UNSW is beginning trials this week on technology to help visually impaired
people navigate indoors.
The indoor Google Maps technology, which uses nearby wi-fi networks and mobile
towers rather than GPS to determine your location, is available for 200 indoor
locations across the country.
The indoor maps automatically appear when you zoom in on a building using the
app. At launch the most popular venues are shopping centres with many
Westfield, Stockland and Centro floor plans covered, among others.
The list also includes 10 train stations (such as Flinders Street and Town
Hall), airports (Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide), several IKEA stores, sports
venues (Hisense Arena, Rod Laver Arena, Etihad Stadium, ANZ Stadium) and
several cultural venues including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art
Gallery of NSW and the Sydney Opera House.
Google's indoor map of Flinders Street Station, Melbourne.
Google's indoor map of Flinders Street Station, Melbourne.
Australian Google Maps product manager Nabil Naghdy said the plan was to
rapidly increase the number of floor plans, and to speed this up business
owners could upload their own plans to Google.
"It's like having an indoor directory in the palm of your hand helping you work
out where you are, what floor you're on and how to get to where you want to
be," he said.
Currently only a "handful" of venues support the "blue dot" that approximates
your location on the indoor map. Google must do surveys of each venue to
determine users can be located to within a few metres.
Google's indoor map of the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney.
Google's indoor map of the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney.
The technology largely relies on nearby wi-fi networks as conventional
satellite technology doesn't work inside or in some built-up outdoor
environments. It will initially only be available on Android devices.
Around the world so far about 10,000 floor plans have been added to Google Maps
in countries including the US, Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Spain,
Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada and Belgium.
Australian indoor navigation firm Navisens recently won the "best technology"
award at the Launch Festival 2013 in the US for discovering how to do indoor
and underground mapping without any infrastructure, including wi-fi networks.
Google's indoor map of Melbourne Airport.
Google's indoor map of Melbourne Airport.
Navisens managing director Ashod Donikian said his technology instead used the
inertial sensors built into smartphones such as accelerometers and gyroscopes
to calculate the user's location by measuring their acceleration and
orientation from a starting point. This data is then crunched by complex
algorithms.
Donikian said there are a variety of applications such as offering targeted
location-based deals in shopping centres, finding where specific items are
located inside stores, finding seats at sporting events, meeting friends at
busy venues and locating people during emergencies.
"In the near future, you will never have to open a door or switch a light, the
environment will know where you are and where you're going and act
accordingly," said Donikian.
"The heating will optimise to where you spend most of your time. Lights will
already be on before you get to the dark room. Your fridge door will slide open
as walk to the fridge."
He hopes companies like Google will acquire or license the Navisens technology
and incorporate it into their apps to enable more efficient and accurate indoor
navigation.
CSIRO has also developed indoor navigation technology and is targeting
industries that require extremely high accuracy such as sports and mining.
CSIRO's research director for wireless and networking technologies, Dr Iain
Collings, said it was accurate to 10 to 20 centimetres.
Catapult Sports is already using the CSIRO technology to track and measure
performance data of athletes including six NBA teams and several indoor Olympic
athletes.
"Location based services are part of the next revolution of smartphone and
tablet applications," said Dr Collings.
Google software engineer Waleed Kadous, an Australian who leads Google's indoor
mapping effort from California, told a conference at UNSW in November last year
that indoor mapping was approaching the tipping point of mainstream adoption
but there were still "major flaws" such as problems gathering the required data.
Kadous showed off an example of an application that is still in development at
Google, which allows people to see where their friends are in a shopping centre
and easily meet them without communicating
UNSW researchers are working on indoor maps applications for the visually
impaired, allowing them to more easily get around chaotic settings such as
airports without assistance. They have already developed the technology
including a user interface that supports Braille and will begin trials with six
visually impaired volunteers this week. The researchers have mapped buildings
at UNSW and the Vision Australia headquarters in Sydney to use as test beds.
Another Australian organisation, Abuzz, which already provides interactive
wayfinding kiosks in 50 of Australia's largest shopping centres, has been
offering to develop indoor navigation apps for existing clients but said the
take up so far by shopping centres was slower than expected.
Will you use Google's Indoor Maps? Let us know in the comments.
source URL:
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/inside-out-google-launches-indoor-maps-20130312-2fxz2.html
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