Google mapping the Great Indoors

17 Nov 2012, 4:23 pm   -   Source: Andy Park, SBS
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The next frontier in digital mapping sees human-made spaces inside airports and skyscrapers mapped while your smartphone plots your every move. But one privacy expert is calling for a "do not follow list", writes Andy Park.

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If you thought that Google maps has charted every inch of the earth’s surface – think again.

An indoor positioning and navigation conference at the University of New South Wales this week brought together experts across diverse fields.

The challenge: to share emerging technologies to explore the new frontier, mapping the great indoors.


Mapping applications like Google maps, from the street and from above, have revolutionized our relationship with geography.

Seventy-five per cent of the Earth's landmass can now be seen in high-resolution images, according to Google.

But a boom in geo-spacial positioning technologies will see the inside of car parks, skyscrapers, airports and shopping centres mapped.

Keynote speaker at the UNSW conference and leading Google's global push indoors from Silicon valley is Australian Dr Waleed Kadous.


"Many people don't realize that GPS doesn’t work indoors, there's no magic GPS the same way there is outdoors, so there is a very deep technical challenge about how to work out where someone is indoors,” he said.

And it's the ubiquitous smart phone and it's ever-advancing features like gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers that are the key.

"What we've done is we've taken WIFI and enhanced it, to also be able to not just predict your latitude and longitude but also the level you're on."
 
Dr Kadous hints at potential applications for social media, where you and your friends can find each other inside a space.


But the idea of indoor positioning data logging has commercial privacy concerns, according to Dr Suelette Dreyfus, a privacy technologies researcher at the University of Melbourne.

“It’s clear that technology is advancing at a much faster rate that the law or regulation is able to deal with it in most countries. But I think that it’s worthwhile for governments to stop and query where the public is at on this, and does it match with where the technology has gone in terms of individual privacies?” she said.

“Because of pressure from the public there was a 'do not ring' list that was put together of people’s private phone numbers who didn’t want to be contacted by telemarketers. Maybe we [now] need a 'do not follow' list.

Dr Kadous says that data that might be logged would be anonymous and that the technology had the potential to benefit the less able.
 
"There's other possible assistive technologies like helping people with visual disabilities, you can imagine that a system tell you when to turn left when it was time to turn left. An would tell you of obstacle that might be in your way"

About 10,000 interiors have been mapped in the US and Europe and the challenge is to incentivise businesses and publicly-used spaces to upload their own floor plans.


Google are remaining tight-lipped about when their indoor mapping technology might be available here in Australia.

"It's very hard to predict the future. At Google, we are interested in delivering services to the user, so we'll use what ever technologies are available, who knows how these things will work out," Dr Kadous said.

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Google Maps , Data , Privacy , Andy Park SBS

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Your Comments

Religion

Valerie - from Melbourne, 6 months ago

What does being a Muslim have to do with this article?

Irrelevant

Jane - from Marsfield, 6 months ago

Talk about completely irrelevant to the context. What on earth does his religion have to do with his area of research? Um, nothing maybe!!!

me again

beady - from Melbourne, 6 months ago

why is the religious belief or not of the leading speaker relevant? This is racial profiling at work here, i can think of any interview where the regilious conviction of the interviewee is explored, unless the topic of the interview contains references to the religious topics. This is an unprofessional peice of writting.

Why mention religion?

Michael - from Perth, 6 months ago

Why would you mention the doctor's religion? "Australian Dr Waleed Kadous, an Australian-born Muslim" seems irrelevant to the story and it implies relevance.

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