Is the Geospatial Bottleneck Software or Data?

I’ve been on a roll the past two weeks regarding intelligent transportation after my visit at the 2011 ITS World Conference in Orlando. Please allow me to touch on it once more and then morph into a highly related topic, sensor fusion.

The 2011 European Satellite Navigation Competition announced the winners this week. The Special Topic Prize, the USA Regional Award, and the overall Galileo Master were awarded to MVS, LLC, from San Francisco, California, with its True-3D technology for its augmented reality and new navigation guidance system.

Watch this 30-second Youtube video that shows how the the Virtual Cable application of the True-3D technology is implemented in a car navigation system.

MVS, LLC’s Virtual Cable technology

Courtesy of MVS, LLC. Components not drawn to scale

Following is an eight-second demonstration of how the Virtual Cable technology could be used to assist navigating in the dark.

True-3D and Virtual Cable are creative examples of new software/hardware being developed to take advantage of existing geospatial data to provide an innovative solution. There is a lot of upside to augmented reality over the next few years that will allow people to visualize geospatial data in ways you’ve never seen. I’ve used the example before of being able to visualize underground infrastructure such as utilities (gas, water, electric). Imagine being able to carry a tablet computer in the field, being able to hold the table flush to the ground and see underground infrastructure on the tablet screen.

Given the above, do you think that geospatial software tools or data are the bottleneck in geospatial apps of the future?

I think the bottleneck is data. Tools have always seemed to outpace data because, generally speaking, acquiring data has always been an ongoing labor-intensive activity moreso than software development. For example, think about GPS navigators in automobiles. There are hundreds of manufacturers of GPS navigator devices in the world and hundreds of GPS navigator software product makers in the world (the software that directs you where to turn, etc.), but there are only two major map database suppliers in the world (TomTom/TeleAtlas and Nokia/Navteq). Yes, there other very small competitors in the map database market, but these two dominate the market. Why is that? It’s just a tough task to create, manage and update the massive database of road detail and points of interest that change on an annual, if not monthly, basis.

The geospatial bottleneck is further exposed when one considers indoor navigation (malls, office buildings, universities, etc.). Even though Building Information Management (BIM) has lagged in GIS, the bottleneck hasn’t been the lack of BIM geospatial data but rather the lack of a positioning sensors that allow reasonably accurate positioning indoors. With GPS, we have fairly good positioning with our planes, trains and automobiles (and mobile phones), and that’s driven the development of extensive map databases of outdoor features. That is going to change. There is a serious effort by many companies, and they seem to be making progress.

Just this week, CSR (SiRF) introduced the SiRFusion Platform that is designed to fuse “multiple location technologies to make accurate indoor location and navigation a reality.”

“The SiRFusion platform and SiRFstarV location architecture are the latest development to promote our vision of enhancing the mainstream consumer experience with a variety of location-enabled services and applications indoors and outdoors, seamlessly,” said Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer for CSR and founder of SiRF. “With today’s announcements, CSR is demonstrating its leadership in taking location to the next level with our SiRFusion platform and SiRFstarV architecture for mobile devices, as well as with our SiRFprimaII SoC for in-dash and on-dash automotive infotainment products.”

The CSR announcement reads “Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position, the SiRFstarV architecture gathers real-time information from GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Compass satellites, multiple radio systems, such as Wi-Fi and cellular, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It then combines this real-time information with ephemeris data, mapping, cellular base station and Wi-Fi access point location data and other cloud-based aiding information using the SiRFusion platform.”

Another promising technology is one being promoted by Locata Corp from Australia. Touting its technology as “GPS 2.0” in recent advertisements, the Locata technology doesn’t require line of sight to GPS satellites. In fact, it doesn’t require GPS satellites at all. It uses a ground-based constellation of transceivers so users can set up their own constellation of “satellites” in their office building, warehouse, university, or other GPS-unfriendly environment and enjoy centimeter-level accuracy.

Locata Technology is used by Leica Geosystems in GPS unfriendly environments.