Microsoft Research Develops An Indoor GPS System

here, with Jie Liu, principal researcher and a research manager saying:

“Currently, the main approach for providing indoor location services is to profile an indoor space to get a set of Wi-Fi maps and use them to infer user location based on the device-provided Wi-Fi signatures. Profiling is a time-consuming and expensive process, because there is no ground truth to ‘nail down’ the Wi-Fi maps. Profiling is also a continuous process, because the number and the locations of the Wi-Fi access points change over time.”

Amazing. But you know what would be even more amazing? Integrating something like this in smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. Then again, since this is still in development phase, it probably will be a few more years before we see something like this in our gadgets and gizmos. But tests, Microsoft Research says, have proven to be rather effective. Of a total 31 locations, this indoor GPS technology proved effective in 20 of them, with a median error of less than 10 meters. Perfectly normal, as far as distances go.]]>