Future of Location Tracker & It’s Big Long Game (Part 1)
By Mongkol Kamolchaisakkul.
If you follow technology news, you should know by now that the location tracker will become mainstream very soon. Why? Because Apple is going to sell one. Once they start, other will follow! So, it’s fun to think what location tracker can do, and how it will impact our lives. Let’s get started.
In the simplest way, attach tracker with key chain then you can locate your keys very precisely; within few centimeters thanks to UWB technology. It may make some noise, or appear in your phone app in augmented reality style. Of course, you can attach tracker to many other things or even person. If you are a lucky target, you will be nicely informed from the one who track you.
Concern Points
But what will be happened, if you are not? Fortunately, based on a rumor from Macrumors.com, Apple will give you notification telling that there is tracker moving with you for some times, and it connects to other’s Apple ID. I don’t know how Apple will pull this off. But, I hope we should be notified very soon, and able to find that mysterious tracker by ourselves easily. However, as we will see trackers from many brands, I wish all those trackers should work with both iOS and Android seamlessly; and always at the same pace. Otherwise, there will be big problems. For example, assuming, I use Android phone but my girlfriend use iPhone. She wants to spy on me, and puts Apple AirTag in my car. If my Android phone cannot give me notification as iPhone does, I will never realize that I am monitored. This kind of solution is not easy. It’s better be embedded in operating systems for safety and privacy; not just another app that you have to manually install and use to see those warning notification. Once the first mainstream tracker is out, I will come back on this topic for sure.
Benefit & Near Future Application
How about the other side of this? Believe me, there are a lot. I will share my idea by sequence that I think it will be happened. First, for sure, this kind of tiny tracker will be used to locate small things those can be easily lost or hard to find, like keys and wallet. Please be noted that, in my opinion, tech companies know well that we are using wallet and key less and less. So, I think they definitely have a lot bigger plan for this location tracking. Second, tracker will be kept inside car, especially the one that have no location tracking option, to let you know the second your car is stolen. Next, because of its size, people will put it in their pet necklace. Fourth, we may discreetly put tracker into the shoes, belt or bag of our older family members; especially the one who suffer from Alzheimer or other neurodegenerative diseases. For this, I am quite sure that someone are planning to design and sell shoes/sandals with a pre-cut hole in midsole for tracker, with covered, for easy put and swap when it needs to be charged.
For this, locating aging population or pet is just a small thing. But the point is how we can manage to reach them in time before they get hurt. So, I am dreaming about a platform that you, as a customer, can share real time location of your tracker to. And this platform has a big number of the members who register as the “Helper” located all over the places to help you reach out and take care your loving one as soon as possible. In easy version, it is a kind of Uber or Grab service that suggest the Helper who stay nearest to your tracker, then help taking care of your granddad who is walking to nowhere.
Longer Term Game: Navigation & Search
So far, indoor navigation is still far from perfect. Google map technology can do Streetview in airport for sure. They also have Google Map AR (which can navigate you through city where GPS signal is not that good. It uses AI and image processing by looking at buildings patterns to know your exact location and walking direction) technology for AR navigation. Google Map AR needs fix building pattern, but the indoor things are totally different. Inside shopping mall, products keep changing, shop renovations, shops closure and replacement can easily confuse AI. But adding small and cheap trackers to the building may solve this issue. By putting them at ceiling along the walk way, escalators, & elevators, developer can do 3D virtual route of each building. If we put them at rooms or shops, we can know exactly what they are. If the shop is relocated inside the same building, you just bring the same old tracker to the new place. With this, indoor navigation is the same thing as finding your wallet at home.
Moreover, in a hypermarket, what will be happened?, if we have a tracker located in front of each SKU. For example, there are 5 brands of sandals on 2 different shelfs, and we put 5 different trackers to them. Once you arrive, you use your phone to search for sandals. As your phone knows you are in that hypermarket, it will show all the 5 sandals as summary with their cost, and available size. If you are ok with, let say, the 5th one, you can select it and your phone or smart glasses will navigate you to that sandals in AR way. In case, there is a nice shoes shop located next to that hypermarket; with tracker too. Search result that I just mentioned will not only show 5 items. It will tell you about this nice shoes shop too. On the other hand, your phone may suggest you not to buy sandals around there, but recommend to get them from amazon instead, because of better promotion, if you can wait.
In brief, small & cheap location tracker will allow all of us to do physical item search. Object and place identification using tracker together with indoor/outdoor navigation can make this happen. It can become an important technology that bridge online and offline things together. If Google can maintain its position at physical object search, no one can compete with Google for decades. But, if someone else, like Apple, can manage to lead the physical world search? Competition between this 2 companies will be getting a lot more serious.
That’s is quite a long 1st write. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment. My next write will continue on this, but focus on other area like gaming and other things.
Mongkol Kamolchaisakkul.
Email: THIM-Technology@outlook.com
