Lost Inside a Mall or Large Building?  Beacons are coming!

Beacons are poised to allow your mobile phone GPS systems to navigate indoors.  Basically, they are low cost bluetooth devices that will be placed throughout buildings.  These devices will communicate with your GPS.  A company called Estimote is already marketing the devices, which are sure to hit the mainstream.  There will be many uses for this technology aside from navigation. The figure below shows likely locations for beacons.

Here are other links:

http://www.businessinsider.com/beacons-and-ibeacons-create-a-new-market-2013-12

http://cs.umaine.edu/~chaw/pubs/bpil.pdf

Reported by James O. Thomas III