Hasta La Gadget!

As you probably already know, GPS technology is pretty much useless once you’re inside of a building, so companies are working on ways to provide directional and navigational information while indoors. One very promising technology has been demonstrated by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

The technology uses visible light communication (VLC), pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) and map matching algorithms to determine the location and direction an individual is facing while indoors. In this demonstration video, we see a subject walking through a mall, and a 3D model of the same location closely replicating the individual’s location and direction.

It doesn’t look like it’s accurate down to the inch, but it’s pretty impressive compared to traditional GPS systems. It’s hard to tell or if the location sensors are placed throughout the building or carried by the individual, but it looks like all he’s carrying is a tablet to control the application, and it’s possible that the sensors are only in the tablet itself. It seems to me that the tablet has an application with a pre-rendered map onboard, and it’s using the tablet’s camera and the lights throughout the space to determine its relative position. Guess it wouldn’t work in the dark then.

It’s not clear if or when this technology will make its way into our lives, but it sure would be cool to be able to find your way around malls, office buildings and indoor stadiums so you can find your way around and your friends can locate you too.

Here’s a fun and trippy hack made by programmer Peter Nitsch. Nitsch’s website converts feed from Google’s Street View to ASCII art in real time. You can also search for locations, just like in the vanilla web app. And yep, it has a “green mode.”

Here’s a closer look at that shot:

And here’s the Matrix mode:

You really should see it for yourself. Nitsch recommends using Chrome or Firefox 8 and above. The characters change as the view slowly pans. It’s like looking at the world from the point of view of a computer.

[via Waxy]

I think we can be honest here; the GPS accuracy on most smartphones isn’t that great. Sure, it might be fine if you’re using the smartphone’s own GPS navigation application, but sometimes they’re not great – especially in dense urban areas. If you use apps that really need accuracy to work, I find most phones onboard GPS to be lacking.

To improve upon the built-in GPS modules found in most smartphones, Garmin has announced a new Bluetooth GPS receiver that works with the iPhone or Android devices.

The Garmin GLO updates positional information 10 times per second and can receive signals from American GPS satellites and Russian GLONASS satellites. The ability to update positional data 10 times per second is about 10 times faster than the internal GPS receiver on most mobile devices. Garmin promises that the device offers enough accuracy to give you solid GPS capability even in the city where tall buildings typically block signals or in canyons. The device has an internal rechargeable battery good for 12 hours at a time. It’s unclear at this point what apps will take advantage of the device though.

Garmin expects to launch the GLO in August for $99(USD).

With all this talk about unmanned drones, it was only a matter of time before a couple of interesting projects would surface. Check out FishPi, an unmanned water vessel which will run a cheap Raspberry Pi computer to try and cross the Atlantic Ocean. Will it succeed?

Its creator, Greg Holloway thinks that FishPi will succeed. It’s currently in the proof-of-concept phase. The autonomous, slightly robotic, drone will also feature a 130 W solar panel that will power it. GPS and a servo controller board helps it guide through squalls. There’s a compass, motor and camera, which can capture video as well.

The prototype version measures 20″ in length, and wards off the elements thanks to a plastic sandwich container. I think that the final build will need to be a bit more refined than that, but if they ultimately set a whole bunch of these off on an Atlantic journey, then odds are that one of them might just make it.

[via Ubergizmo]