iBeacon and Indoor Positioning System (IPS)

I have been excited for the Indoor Positioning System (IPS) Technology for a quite while. In fact, one of the main reasons I train myself to be an iOS developer is because I want to develop some excited Location and Positioning Based Mobile apps that will change the way we do things in life.

What is Indoor Positioning System?

Indoor Positioning System is a new technology that probably only exists in less than 15 years ago. When I am trying to find more information about this IPS technology from Wikipedia, the earliest research paper on the reference was dated based in year 2009. But when I am searching through google search, I found some research papers on early 2000s.

So, this is a relatively new technology that we haven’t see much applications on the real world yet. But, this will definitely change in the next 5 years.

With the exponential growth of the smart phone users, we have seen a lot of location based (GPS) mobile applications that pop up in the last 5 years. For your information, Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed in 1940s during the World War 2. So, GPS was initially developed to pinpoint the enemy’s location so that they can launch a missile to that location. Thanks to the mobile technology, the GPS technology has been highly commercialised to the mass market in the last 5 years.

All the smart phones users know very well that the Global Positioning System (GPS) does not work well inside a building. This is where the Indoor Positioning System comes into existence.

I am actually betting that the Indoor Positioning System will become highly commercialised within the next 5 years. There will be a lot of innovative mobile apps coming out of it that will make our life easier.

What is iBeacon?

Beacon is actually a device that transmits signal to its surrounding to determine the approximate distance betweens some objects and the broadcaster. We have seen some real world applications like on a car with reverse sensor. That sensor is actually a type of beacon.

iBeacon, on the other way, is a term trademarked by Apple. It is a new iOS technology which is only available on iOS 7 and onwards. iBeacon is using Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) to determine the your location as far as 10 50 meters inside a building.

The vivid location based Mobile apps users know very well that the location based apps usually consume a lot of battery, especially on the navigation mobile apps.

One of the big advantages over the GPS technology is that the IPS technology such as Bluetooth consumes a lot less battery. Even if you turn your bluetooth on 24 hours per day, you almost never feel any battery drain at all.

Some people mentioned that iBeacon is better than the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that is available on some Android devices. It is due to its greater distance in discovery (iBeacon: 10 50 meters vs. NFC: 20 cms) and energy efficiency.

You may learn the details on the iBeacon here: iBeacon – Wikipedia.

So, What’s Next?

Some people mentioned that after Steve jobs passed aways, there isn’t much innovations coming out from Apple. This isn’t true. We have seen the innovation from Apple from iPhone 5s which has the fingerprint recognition technology and also this iBeacon Technology.

The DNA that Steve Jobs has implemented into Apple will last for a very long time. Apple was late in the map and location technology when comparing with Google. But, it has been catching up fast.

Apple has acquired an Indoor Positioning company – WiFiSlam for $20 millions. There isn’t much news from Apple after the acquisition. I believe we will hear something within the next 1 year.

Don Dodge, who is a Developer Advocate for Google, mentioned in his blog post that there will be many potential markets that could adopt IPS technology. There will be a lot of winners in this technology. He is also an investor and also advisor for some of the IPS startups.

I am very excited to see what will be coming out from iBeacon and Indoor Positioning System within the next 5 years. I just started to learn iBeacon iOS framework and I will make a new post when I am ready to share.