You can’t get lost at the shops now
If you’ve ever got lost in a shopping centre or been unable to find the item you want in a supermarket, a new generation of gadgets could help you out by bringing satnav indoors.
Experts say the technology is set to come to shops and offices across the capital within a year.
Cambridge-based CSR is testing the system at its San Francisco office while Google is working on a system for San Francisco airport. Tesco is also trialling a system at its Romford store that uses wifi signals to send shoppers to the right part of the store.
“People are used to a certain level of experience — we wanted to bring that indoors into the shopping malls and offices and let people find their way around,” says Kanwar Chadha of CSR.
In a demonstration to the Evening Standard, the system pinpointed us to within 5m inside CSR’s office, showing our location on a floor map of the office displayed on a mobile phone.
Chadha says retailers are already working on the systems for major shopping centres. “If you are in a mall such as Westfield, we can get you to a small store, or to a particular section within a large store.”
The system uses several technologies to tell users where they are. “GPS satellites are not enough, you have to rethink how to do it,” says Chadha. “We have taken information from multiple sensors, such as satellite, radio signals such as cellular signals or wifi, and then sensors such as the compass built into phones. Using all this, we can work out where you are to give you an indoor experience just like an outdoor satnav.”
CSR’s product, called SIRF Fusion, is set to appear in mobile phones within months, with the first big shopping centres adding it within a year. “Indoor satnav will become normal within two years,” Chadha says. “It will start with big malls but will eventually cover a lot of indoor environments, and we will see a huge number of people developing apps for phones to take advantage of indoor satnavs.”
