back to article Nokia creates Indoor Positioning

GPS is fine if you just need directions from your office to a restaurant, but it’s not much help for finding your way around a building. So Nokia has developed a form of indoor GPS. According to a post of the Finnish firm’s Conversations website, Indoor Positioning could – potentially – help you find places and items indoors, …

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  1. Chris Morrison
    Go

    Nice

    I did this in my final year thesis at uni. Worked pretty well in the royal college building at strathclyde. Didn't work quite as flawlessley as I would ahve liked but then I was just one under grad not quite the same scale as nokia!

  2. James
    Unhappy

    Why is

    ...Nokia keeping my mum?

    Isn't that schtum?

  3. Andrew Moore

    It wouldn't be difficult

    You could ape exactly the way GNSS systems currently work. And without the need to derive out some of the non-dispersive errors it should be pretty accurate.

    All the system would need to do is rewrite the almanacs to include stationary ground-based transmitters but I'm pretty sure that's already included in the protocol.

  4. Simplepieman
    Flame

    Me too: been there, done that...

    I had a pretty neat prototype working using a combination of solid state giros and traditional GPS 5 years ago when I worked at ****. Of course we had drift, but most of that was down to our crude prototype manufacture and we reckoned on a much greater improvement if we got the giro alignment more true to the orthogonal. Then we all got fired as **** closed their UK research arm. ****

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Excellent...

    Mapping of airports?

    Now a terrorist can use their mobile phone to find the bomb site and set the bomb off too.

  6. Nano nano

    Shopping made simple ...

    Then I can just merge my shopping list with the local Sainsbury's shelf map, and my Nokia-fied trolley can say "DESTINATION:TOMATOES NEXT LEFT, THEN IMMEDIATE RIGHT FOR PEAS. AT ITALIAN RED WINE TAKE SECOND TURNING" for an optimal route plan ...

  7. Anonymous John
    Coat

    Will it

    be useful for finding coats?

  8. Dale

    can of beans

    Supermarkets don't want you to find your can of beans. Not immediately, anyway. The layout is designed to make you wander endlessly through all the aisles looking for that elusive can of beans which, this week, is located next to the baking accessories. Next week it'll be across from the salad dressing, just in case you memorised the floorplan. The longer you walk, the more you buy.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    @shopping made simple...

    ... Connect the phone via bluetooth to your remote control trolley, and sit back in starbucks waiting for the bill to be texted through... and the trolley to make it's way home...

    Ah... isn't that Internet shopping?

  10. Andy Taylor
    Coat

    I thought this could be done already

    I saw this done on an episode of Spooks...

  11. Law
    Flame

    RE: I thought this could be done already

    You joke about it - but I once had to calm my father-in-law when he found out there was a code that could shut down the entire internets, after the guys in Spooks saved us all from it falling into the wrong hands, had they not planes could fall out of the sky, banks would collapse, the economy would go into meltdown, and countries would be at each other throats preparing for war.

    I laughed and explained it was just a TV program, and that it couldn't be that simple otherwise nobody would use it.

    But now look... Phorm starts pissing about with ISPs in the UK, and within a year or so the world is in crisis, planes falling out of the sky, banks collapsing, economy in meltdown, and everybody is fighting everybody else..... if only I'd of listened.... if only we all had...........

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    url

    What's the URL to the Conversations post??

  13. Ben Mathews

    @ Roger de Laborde

    Until, presumably it directs them into a stream.

    Or a motorway....

  14. Chris

    Cool..

    does this mean we can finally get a transponder to put on someone, and have not only a blip on a screen showing distance, but the cool 3d effects of showing the floor plan and what not? I've always wanted that.

  15. Alfred Loo

    Been there done that.

    Differential GPS anyone?

  16. James
    Joke

    Is this progress..?

    Making it easier for Chavs and Pikeys to find the Elizabeth Duke Counter.......!

    Is this really progress..?

  17. Nano nano

    No, Grasshopper

    @Alfred Loo:

    No, DGPS only works if you can receive GPS signals - notably crap within buildings or built-up areas, and who knows how shot the timings would be (unless you're tendering for a Govt. offender-tracking contract, that is ...)

  18. Simon Kingston

    > Been there done that

    > Differential GPS anyone?

    No, this is more like enhanced GPS (eGPS):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGPS

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