GPS goes beyond navigation to video games

If you thought it was cool tying a video game to the physical world via consoles equipped with MEMS accelerometers—the technique Nintendo used to make "Wii" a household name—wait until you see what GPS can do to expand the future of video gaming.

In an R&D project called Mediascape, U.S.-based Hewlett Packard Labs, together with a team of U.K. researchers developed a location-based interactive software development platform. The goal is to link a collection of digital media fragments to the physical world using GPS, mobile devices and sensors. As a user with a GPS-enabled mobile phone or PDA walks, the device senses his position and triggers the appropriate media file.

By combining GPS and a digital compass with accelerometers, Mediascape lets gamers "become a mouse and a gamepad," said Patrick Goddi, a senior researcher at HP Labs.

The R&D team is still in "an early phase of exploring the business model" for Mediascape, said Goddi, but the implications of the research are signficant. First, it could define a new generation of video games that can be played in a "physical" or "mobile" environment—inside or out. Second, and perhaps more important, the new platform could serve as an engine for new social networking applications like blogging that are directly linked to physical locations. That fact could enable Mediascape to ride a growing GPS tidal wave in the mobile market.

Beyond navigation
If this year's Mobile World Congress was any indication, GPS is fast becoming more than a technology for car navigation. Nokia, Google and others increasingly view GPS as a key technology for defining a next-generation, "context-based" Internet.

In rolling out its own Maps 2.0 service, Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo promised that Nokia would take "navigation out of the car and bring it to the sidewalk." As a user snaps pictures with a camera phone, for example, Maps 2.0 could simultaneously store GPS coordinates in a metadata file, a capability known as geo-tagging.

HP's Mediascape platform would allow users, programmers and Web designers to go further. Using free Mediascape development tools and players released last year, some developers have already created several Mediascape programs, including a treasure hunt and a Yosemite National Park guide wiki-ed by forest rangers. Both programs linked a trail of clues or guide tips with location information.

Mediascape currently uses GPS to determine location, but the research team is planning to release support for Bluetooth beacons and other sensors so it can also work indoors.

HP's Bristol, U.K. group held Mediascape's first developers conference late last year, with more than 200 developers attending. While current Mediascape development is centered on games and education, HP hopes it can be applied to broader consumer and enterprise applications where information and media need to be associated with different locations.

- Junko Yoshida
EE Times