IT TRENDS
There is nothing like `still life,' so track it
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Location-awareness technology is driving many consumer and corporate applications
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INDIGENOUS INGENUITY: Some of Garmin's portable GPS Navigators are fuelled by indigenous technology.
THE FEMALE voice is unmistakeably American but the directions it is giving are very Indian. "Take a left turn at the CMH Road and proceed half a mile down the Double Road till you reach the ESI Hospital." The female voice is American but the directions it is giving are very Indian.
I am riding on the pillion of a scooter in Bangalore and an empty feeling in the general region of the stomach has inspired me to set the Garmin `Nuvi' Personal Travel Assistant its first challenge: Guide me to my favourite vegetarian fast food joint — Sreenidhi Upahaar — only, I am not too sure where in Indira Nagar, it is located.
`Ms Nuvi' has no such doubt: when I punch the soft button of the touch screen, marked `Food,' I am offered a long list of eateries. Sreenidhi is there, half way down, and I have just asked her for instructions to get there.
This is my first outing with a Global Positioning System (GPS)-backed personal navigator and so far, the Bangalore city software has stood up pretty well.
U.S. based leader
The Nuvi 350 is the model I am trying out — and as its opening menu says, it is `fuelled by SiRF' — a U.S.-based leader in location-sensitive technology, founded by an IIT Delhi alumnus, Kanwar Chadha, and still substantially fuelled by Indian brains based in Bangalore and Noida, near Delhi.
Garmin, an American player, is the world's largest maker of personal products based on GPS — the network of 24 satellites that helps devices on earth establish their exact location within a few metres.
And there are many items in Garmin's portfolio — including its latest Nuvi 200 series of entry-level personal locators that were unveiled last month.
SiRF's President and CEO Michael Canning helped me understand why location technologies suddenly seem like ideas whose time has come.
There is nothing like `still life' outside an artist's studio. Think about it: real life is about movement. People like you and me have an increasing feeling of insecurity about our loved ones on the move: Will our children return safely from school? Have they strayed from the road that leads to school and playground? We always used to worry.
GPS devices finally allow us to keep a watchful eye on our loved ones ... as long as they wear or carry a suitable device.
In the U.S. and Europe such GPS tags and monitors used to be fairly pricey. Increasing competition from Asian manufacturers has already crashed the entry level to less than $ 150 and the trend will soon place such devices within the reach of the average Indian consumer.
Meanwhile the location business in India is being fuelled by two parallel markets: vehicle and logistic tracking on the enterprise front — and the individual car-navigator business at the consumer end.
Slow, steady build-up
Garmin navigators and some of their competitors are now being distributed in many Indian cities; the market is being driven by the slow but steady build-up of geographic and cartographic software from third party Indian developers.
There a few dozen players offering GPS-based transport logistics and some of them like Bangalore-based EI Labs cannily mix-n-match location techniques based on GPS as well as the GSM -GPRS mobile phone network to create solutions like TransitData, that aim to be cost effective in India. The Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment of the Defence Ministry has embedded GPS technology in parachutes, so that they can land with pinpoint accuracy.
One of the most popular applications for GPS-based technology has been a camera that stamps each picture with the geographic coordinates of the place where it was taken.
In Beijing last month, I handled one of the world's first ultra mobile PCs that came with a built-in GPS location system sourced from SiRF. Mr Canning told me that this addresses one of the major irritants for laptop-towing executives constantly on the move: theft.
Now they can programme the GPS system to create a sort of `lakshman rekha' around the places where they generally use their machines — and an alarm will sound if some one takes it outside the perimeter.
It cannot go too far, because the system will continue to beam its coordinates till you remotely switch it off or catch the thief.
In the GPS grid
Entire campuses, like that of Cornell University, have put themselves into a GPS grid to track key personnel and equipment.
Is there a fear of a `Big Brother is watching you' situation? There are some fears — but the overwhelming advantages offered by location-awareness are generally expected by its proponents to outweigh any small sacrifice of privacy.
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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