It is the middle of the night on a farm in the American Midwest, and a tractor is spraying pesticides, guided by GPS. GPS guidance of farm and construction machinery has been growing since the late 1990s, and allows farmers to work more efficiently around the clock.
In California, high-risk parolees are being tracked by permanently-attached GPS ankle bands. Their accuracy allows law-enforcement agencies to be alerted if, for example, a monitored sex offender too closely approaches a preset exclusion zone such as a playground.
According to ABI Research senior analyst of wireless connectivity Philip Solis, such examples show that this single technology has the flexibility to be included in a huge variety of applications. "In the fishing-grounds of Asia, GPS tracking of fishing boats' locations is being used to resolve territorial fishery disputes. Some U.S. army ordnance now uses GPS to replace the glowing tracer bullets previously used for targeting," he said.
Closer to everyday life, HP has launched a new 'smartphone' that includes GPS in addition to its roster of communications technologies, GSM, GPRS and EDGE. The addition of GPS enables the emerging breed of location-based services that will be able to provide everything from road navigation to restaurant-finding.
ABI Research's study, "Satellite Positioning Systems and Devices", covers all these uses of GPS and more. "What makes this study popular," notes Solis, "is that it examines virtually all current applications for GPS, not just telematics and mobile phones." The study's latest edition has broadened its coverage to include agricultural and construction machinery GPS systems, as well as the many kinds of human and animal tracking.
