MARTIN OMANDER: Hi.
Welcome to Root Access, the show on Google Developers Live
about startups.
My name is Martin Omander, and I'm joined here today by Don
Dodge, Googler, long-time investor, and startup
evangelist.
We're going to have a series of discussions about new hot
technologies.
And today we're going to talk about indoor location.
Don, you've invested in indoor location startups.
There have been some recent acquisitions.
What's this indoor location all about?
What are the use cases?
DON DODGE: Yeah, so indoor location has gotten a lot of
attention recently, because there have been three
high-profile acquisitions in this space.
Apple acquired WiFiSLAM.
Ruckus networks acquired one, and there was a third one that
was acquired.
So it's getting a lot of attention from investors and
technologists about, hey, what's going on here?
What's going on is, because of the emergence of smartphones,
everyone has a computer in their pocket that's capable of
displaying a map, and it has a built-in GPS, and a built-in
Wi-Fi, and a built-in Bluetooth.
Those technologies can be used to locate you indoors.
So GPS and Maps work great outdoors.
But we spend 90% of our time indoors.
So inside an office building, inside a shopping mall, inside
a college dorm or wherever, GPS doesn't work, so Maps
don't help.
And these indoor location technologies do work indoors
and open up all sorts of opportunities.
So that's why it's a hot trend right now.
MARTIN OMANDER: Ah, right.
So that's why we're seeing it now and not five years ago?
Because we all have smartphones?
DON DODGE: Right.
The technology has been around for a while.
But the ability to use it really depends on the
smartphone and the built-in sensors in the smartphone, the
Wi-Fi radios and Bluetooth and GPS.
All of those things together make it possible to be able to
do indoor location with technologies that have been
around for a while.
MARTIN OMANDER: So I know what building I'm in.
I entered by the front door here today.
How can knowing exactly where in the building I am help me
or others around me?
DON DODGE: Well, first, how would it work?
So there would be a little sensor on the front
door when you enter.
So that's what's known as a truth point.
From that truth point, you can use a variety of technologies
to determine where you are in the building.
So it could use the accelerometer, or the gyro, or
the compass, or other sensors that are built into your phone
to count the steps and direction from that known
truth point.
Or when you enter the building, it has Wi-Fi, so
your smartphone picks up the Wi-Fi signals and can
triangulate from those signals where you are in the building.
Or it could use Bluetooth, low-energy type beacons that
are on the wall or in the ceiling to help
navigate where you are.
Another approach is something called ByteLight.
It uses LED lights that pulse.
And the pulses in those lights are so fast the human eye
can't see them, but when you're holding your smartphone
in your hand, there's a front-facing camera.
That camera picks up the pulses and can identify which
light is emitting that pulse and, therefore, triangulate
where you are.
So that's a quick overview of some of the technologies that
are used and how they work.
But now that you know how they work, how
would a user use them?
Or what applications of this technology are there?
Well, the obvious ones are things like retailers and
supermarkets and that sort of thing.
Let's say you have a shopping list for the grocery store,
and it has 30 items on it.
If you're like me, you've gone through the store, and you get
27 of the 30 items, and then you have to backtrack to find
the last three, like where are they?
You somehow missed them.
MARTIN OMANDER: Oh, yes.
Been there, done that, yes.
DON DODGE: So you could use this to put your shopping list
in your phone, and then the phone would create a map for
you and tell you exactly where each of those
products are on the shelf.
Or if you're in a retail location like Walmart or
Lowe's or Walgreens where they have thousands of SKUs, you
could do a search for "tell me where the Gucci bags are," or
"tell me where the spaghetti is," and it will take you
right to that point.
So you could use them in those ways.
Social applications.
You want to know where your friends are.
You're at a concert or you're at a
conference with 5,000 people.
And you know you have 10 friends there,
but where are they?
You can't find them.
Well, with indoor location, you can type in the name of
that friend.
They accept that they want you to be able to know where they
are, and then, boom, on the map it shows you
exactly where they are.
Or if you take your family to the shopping mall, and your
kids are running off in other directions, and you go this
way, and the spouse goes the other way, on a map you can
actually see where you are.
So there are all kinds of different applications of the
technology and many more that we haven't thought of that
will come up in the future.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
Because it's still early days, it sounds like.
DON DODGE: Very early days.
This is why it's a hot topic and a hot trend, because it's
a technology that's enabling all kinds of applications.
And just like GPS or Maps, I remember when they were first
introduced 15 years ago.
No one really understood how they would be used.
And now, they're ubiquitous.
They're in all kinds of applications.
MARTIN OMANDER: And we can't live without them.
DON DODGE: Exactly.
The same is going to happen with indoor location.
There are a few businesses and use cases that we can clearly
understand, but there will be hundreds more that will evolve
that we just haven't thought of.
MARTIN OMANDER: Right.
So you mentioned there were a number of different
technologies here at play.
Will one of them become the standard in a couple of years?
DON DODGE: Perhaps, but I don't think so, because there
are a variety of different ways to approach the problem.
So Wi-Fi is one place, Bluetooth, lights in the
ceiling, sound sensors, beacons.
There are all these different technical approaches.
They each have their advantages and disadvantages,
and they sort of depend on cost of infrastructure versus
low cost or accuracy.
So if you want to be accurate to within one foot or one
meter, those technologies are going to cost a little less
than technologies that can do it within 3
meters or 10 meters.
So there's a cost versus accuracy thing.
There's also an open and ubiquitous versus private and
proprietary.
So some applications don't care about being open and
ubiquitous.
They're very specific applications for a retail
store or for a venue or whatever.
And there are others that care more about being open.
So it depends.
The short answer is no, I don't think that there will be
one or two leaders.
I think there will be probably 20 different companies who
will be successful in this area.
MARTIN OMANDER: Wow.
It will be interesting to see how that shakes out over the
next couple of years.
DON DODGE: That's why it's a hot trend and a topic we need
to talk about.
MARTIN OMANDER: Hot trend and a topic we need to talk about.
Good.
Thanks, Don.
That's all for today.
Thank you for joining us.
If you have any questions you'd like us to bring up in
future episodes, please leave them in the YouTube comments.
Thank you for joining us, and see you next
week at the same time.
Bye.