Gadgets That Know Exactly Where Their Friends Are [Location]

The mantra for gadgets at the present time is location, location, location. Now, researchers at MIT are making electronics check with each other in new the right way to see just how accurate their pinpointing skills can get.

Instead of a GPS-like system during which the entire different devices send their location to a single receiver, researchers at MIT’s Wireless Communications and Network Sciences Group are making gadgets talk directly to at least one another. But what’s novel about their approach is that the devices aren’t just saying where they suspect they’re; they’re broadcasting the entire chances of where they could be:

Among their insights is that networks of wireless devices can improve the precision of their location estimates if they share information about their imprecision. Traditionally, a device broadcasting information about its location would simply offer up its best guess. But if, instead, it sent a probability distribution – a number of possible positions and their likelihood – the whole network would perform better as a full.

By hoping on cooperation amongst the devices themselves instead of a single, fixed infrastructure, a la GPS, the researchers have created networks of devices can locate themselves with reliability and sub-meter accuracy.

The downside of having the devices broadcast their possible location data is that it gobbles up more power and creates more interference than traditional methods, though the researchers are working on optimizing their system for practical applications. Like having my phone help me find my missing Xbox controller. [ MIT via Wired ]

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This post is tagged: location location location, practical applications, probability distribution, share information, wireless communications