Navigation indoors, even underground?
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2009-09-18
Your SatNav system won't be great in Manhattan because of all those tall buildings. Your GPS device needs 3 or 4 satellites in view before it will work reliably.
On the other hand, mobile phones, with their cell-based relay system, work remarkably well in Manhattan, and even work well in stores, elevators, and underground, and your cell phone can be tracked, with increasing accuracy. In fact this tracking ability is now becoming an important source of traffic information.
Increasing accuracy in tracking cell phones (it's done by triangulation) has given rise to a new possibility - use of phone tracking for navigation.
GloPos is a software startup company founded by Mikael Vainio and Alexander Le Bell, former employees of Nokia and Ericsson. The company maintains that its advanced location algorithm will enable navigation by mobile phone, with a host of advantages, both for phone users and those who want to advertise to them.
The GloPos system is an advance on the triangulation technology that has been used for years to track phones. Apart from its obvious uses in navigation for cell phone users it also offers the possibility of advertising for Location-Based-Services - in other words, store owners or service vendors can advertise you much more effectively if they know you are in their vicinity.
The GloPos company is a spin-off from Finland-based 4TS, a company that offers location and sensor technologies for logistics and shipping industries. It is funded by angel investors.
Vainio and Le Bell have not yet decided whether the software will be marketed through phone carriers or directly to phone owners. Recently they told Business Week reporter Kevin Tofel that they are considering an app for the iPhone.
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