Introduction - Ubiquitous Positioning - page 10

developed that are now used as international standards. Some are small enough to
be carried in navigation satellites.
There has been a general trend where early adoption of advanced technology
used by the military is reused by civilian mass markets. Whereness is highly
dependent on this “peace dividend” and military technology still remains a fruitful
place to find new technology for the consumer. Many of the WW2 techniques are
being used again in ubiquitous computing experiments, which in due course will
be commercialized.
1.4.2 Today's Opportunities and the Current Fragmented Market
The situation today is that there are many ways to find position but they are all
separate and use technologies that differ. The raw information is used
independently and computing applications do not have any way to access position
as a general service. There are many useful applications but they are operating in
“stovepipes” or vertical businesses seeking to address specific and usually niche
markets. The emerging applications and market areas are currently fragmented.
One of the problems with the whole idea of Whereness is that it concerns bringing
together very different areas of specialist knowledge, some of which have been
known for many decades (maps, navigation, and radio ranging) and some of
which are quite new (digital wireless, the Internet, ubiquitous computing, and the
Semantic Web).
The two most important areas are location-based services (LBS) and
intelligent transportation systems (ITS), with ITS a subset of LBS. The main
difference is that LBSs are mostly provided by mobile network operators and ITSs
are associated with transport organizations and public authorities. It is the
intention of this topic to present a converged approach, taking the view that the
spread of computing and communications will dominate the future and lead to
mass markets replacing the niche areas. Whereness may become a hugely
significant economic opportunity. The voyages of discovery and subsequent
globalization were predicated on reliable navigation and positioning, but before
discussing applications and the business aspects of Whereness it is important to
consider a few basics.
1.4.3 Position, Location, and Coordinates
There is a difference between what we mean by location and position.
Hightower's taxonomy 3 of location systems for mobile computing applications [4]
draws the distinction that a position can include orientation. For example, a
wheeled vehicle could be traveling backwards or forwards, or in the case of an
aircraft that can travel in three dimensions, position could include information
about yaw, pitch, and roll.
3 A taxonomy of positioning (after Hightower) is included is in the Appendix.