London – A new GPS technology that can identify locations accurate to within centimetres could open the way for huge advances in virtual reality and mobile mapping, scientists believe.
Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas said the centimetre-accurate GPS-based positioning system could allow unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver packages to a specific spot in a consumer's back garden.
The new system, which is far more precise than the GPS capabilities currently available on smartphones, could also enable collision avoidance technologies on cars and allow virtual reality (VR) headsets to be used outdoors.
Researchers said the advanced GPS coupled with a smartphone camera could be used to quickly build a globally referenced 3D map of one's surroundings that would greatly expand the radius of a VR game. Currently, VR does not use GPS, which limits its use to indoors and usually to a two- to three-foot radius.
Todd Humphreys, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and the lead researcher of the project, said: “Imagine games where, rather than sit in front of a monitor and play, you are in your back garden actually running around with other players. To be able to do this type of outdoor, multiplayer virtual reality game, you need highly accurate position and orientation that is tied to a global reference frame.”
Humphreys and his team in the Radionavigation Lab have built a low-cost system that reduces location errors from the size of a large car to the size of a small coin – a more than 100 times increase in accuracy.
Centimeter-accurate positioning systems are already used in geology, surveying and mapping, but the survey-grade antennas these systems employ are too large and costly for use in mobile devices. The breakthrough by Humphreys and his team is a powerful and sensitive software-defined GPS receiver that can extract centimeter accuracies from the inexpensive antennas found in mobile devices – such precise measurements were not previously possible. The researchers anticipate that their software’s ability to leverage low-cost antennas will reduce the overall cost of centimeter accuracy, making it economically feasible for mobile devices.
Humphreys and his team have spent six years building a specialised receiver, called GRID, to extract so-called carrier phase measurements from low-cost antennas. GRID currently operates outside the phone, but it will eventually run on the phone’s internal processor.
To further develop this technology, Humphreys and his students recently co-founded a startup, called Radiosense. Humphreys and his team are working with Samsung to develop a snap-on accessory that will tell smartphones, tablets and virtual reality headsets their precise position and orientation.
The researchers designed their system to deliver precise position and orientation information – how one’s head rotates or tilts – to less than one degree of measurement accuracy. This level of accuracy could enhance VR environments that are based on real-world settings, as well as improve other applications, including visualisation and 3D mapping.
Additionally, the researchers believe their technology could make a significant difference in people’s daily lives, including transportation, where centimeter-accurate GPS could lead to better vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology.
“If your car knows in real time the precise position and velocity of an approaching car that is blocked from view by other traffic, your car can plan ahead to avoid a collision,” Humphreys said. – The Independent and IOL