Blog 8 - Social Robotics and/or GPS/GIS

In the real world, many of us rely on GPS to help us get to and from work, get around, and find new and exciting places to visit. GPS is used in many ways that various of us get lost without the instant navigation of our phones.

Walk into almost any building, and GPS becomes useless. Faced with no choice, most of us accept this fact, hide our phones, and switch to more traditional ways of getting our bearings: looking around for signs overhead, following written instructions, or asking for help.

Of course, our current approach to indoor navigation leaves a lot to be desired, especially when compared to outdoor navigation. GPS is powerful, but it rarely works indoors, and there's a reason for that: GPS signals are broadcast by satellites orbiting the Earth, and they're designed to permeate the atmosphere, fog, rain, and vegetation, but not brick, stone, and concrete.

In the future, we may need a new kind of indoor navigation that allows users to instantly find their way around new buildings, or Google Maps that provides the same way to find objects of interest outdoors. Does such technology exist? An accurate indoor GPS would have to provide a seamless experience for users with little or no effort and no need for them to have been in the place before trying to navigate.

Imagine being able to quickly navigate to your car in an underground parking lot, no matter where you are or navigate through a crowded supermarket to the freshest fruit aisle in the supermarket's fruit section. That's a seamless user experience.

A practical indoor technology could also revolutionize our relationship with things. Instead of rummaging through your hallway, you can know exactly where your online purchases are, with tiny sensors on your keys, wallet, watch, laptop, and headphones showing where they are all the time.

For examples, when looking for another lost Air Pod, we can track it back to the device at any time and don't waste time digging around like we used to. Similarly, technicians can quickly and easily find access to buildings they have never visited, while businesses can analyze shoppers' traffic flows to provide customers with unique and optimized shopping experiences. Not to mention the firefighters, because they will know precisely where the trapped people are, which means the rescue is more efficient.

I am looking forward to the emergence and updating of such indoor navigation and human-machine systems, making our lives more easy and convenient.

Indoor positioning and wayfinding systems: a survey

https://hcis-journal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13673-020-00222-0