In a mall at the weekend? WORSE STILL, are you LOST? A new indoor positioning system has been unveiled by Bluetooth grandees Cambridge Silicon Radio. The system consists of Android middleware which gives access to a database of indoor positions. While GPS works pretty well when it has a good view of the sky, indoor positioning is more of a challenge. The new SiRFusion library …
Or they could just download (proper) Nokia's Here maps that has internal maps for things like shopping centres and railway stations.
The latter is down to a suprising low level, so even my local rail station is covered - that's 2 platforms and 1 booking office on the level 1 and the walkway of the bridge between platforms on level 2!
Those expanded map items are excellent, look at Harrods sometime, amazing.
But, they don't tell you where you are of course unless your GPS does see the sky a bit. My view is that one can determine where you are in a shopping centre simply by looking at a shop - they tend to advertise clearly what they are. Finding the shop or toilet you then want is a cinch since the info is excellent and much, much better than some aerial photo downloaded using data that might not be available.
Mind you, I tend to get a passable GPS fix (i.e. not just a WiFi fix) in many places, like shopping centres, where I seem to have no sky. Not 5m accuracy I imagine but it does allow me to have the map at my location immediately at least.
lone worker efficiency
The kind of euphemism that explains why trade unions are still popular.
"Jones, we're letting you go, as you spent five point seven minutes in the toilet, and another three point six at the coffee machine before returning to work."
"And just what were you doing in that closet that caused your phone to change elevation repeatedly and quickly for ten minutes?"
Nope, that phrase is the management saying "You're changing the ceiling lights on your own from now on, because your phone will now automatically call the ambulance to collect your cold, dead corpse before anyone important sees it if you fall, so it's now perfectly safe."
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