Friday, November 04, 2005

Eyes on Galileo - and the 'green vehicles'

Galileo is a satellite-based positioning network similar to -- but more accurate than -- the well-known Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS, put into space by the United States, originally limited civilian accuracy but gave the military full access.
An interesting development of the increase in positioning/location aware technologies:

"Galileo, a European Space Agency system, uses the same overall protocols as GPS (and therefore accessible using the same hardware), but its readings will be accurate to less than a meter. Galileo is set to be operational by 2008. The European Union, in an attempt to encourage innovative uses of Galileo, holds an annual Galileo Masters competition, and this year's winners have a distinctly green aspect.

The top prize went to VU Log, a French company building a satellite-monitored electric car sharing network. As the BBC describes it:

The transport application devised by the Vu Log company in Sophia Antipolis, France, envisages a fleet of "green" vehicles on city roads. Each electrically powered mini-car would be equipped with instant and highly precise positioning equipment. Commuters could use the internet or their mobile phone to find the nearest vehicle, jump in and start it with a smartcard, and then drive it to their destination.
"There would be no constraint - you could leave the car where you wanted," explained Vu Log's George Gallais.
"The service provider would come and charge the cars up every two or three days. Being used just for short distances, they wouldn't need charging every day," he told the BBC News website.


The best UK entry was TrackerBack, a method of monitoring the real-time location of truck loads. The green application? Control of illegal waste and dumping:

"With the sub-metre accuracy of Galileo, you'd even know how high off the ground that consignment of tyres was," [the inventor, Richard White] said. "You'd know instantly if it had been dumped over a hedge rather being taken to the reprocessing plant."
It remains to be seen whether applications such as VU Log and TrackerBack will show up outside of Europe. There's no reason why they couldn't. Like GPS, Galileo will be accessible world-wide, and the cost of positioning system receivers is now low enough for casual use. By 2008, the technology should be small enough and inexpensive enough for routine inclusion in most portable communication and information devices.

Via Worldchanging

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