As navigation looks indoors, new uses appear

23.03.2012
The maps on smartphones and tablets soon may extend into buildings, but consumers and service providers won't use indoor maps the same as outdoor, participants in the location-based services business said on Wednesday.

Indoor location was a hot topic at the GPS-Wireless conference in Burlingame, California, where panelists also discussed privacy, advertising and new services that ride on top of navigation. The indoor technology is just beginning to emerge and may be getting a burst of hype, but it has the potential for useful applications, some speakers said.

Most agreed that mapping and navigation won't play out the same way indoors as outdoors. For one thing, people don't usually need indoor maps just to find their way through a building.

"Indoor, generally, the way you navigate isn't by looking at your screen and walking around and hoping you don't bump into people," said Nick Brachet, chief technology officer of Skyhook, a developer of location-based software. Instead, people can often use familiar cues to find their way around a building. As a result, the turn-by-turn navigation that powered the consumer GPS industry in its early stages won't be the first killer app of indoor navigation, he said.

Other objectives

Rather than telling you the one optimum way to get from place to place, indoor navigation might give you a route that best serves your interests, said Ankit Agarwal, CEO of Micello, which generates indoor maps and navigation information and licenses them to developers.