By : Penny Jones
Category : Blutooth Low Energy (BLE)
"Look!" your phone might soon be saying. "There's your favourite cafe. Why not pop in for a coffee and a muffin? It's half price if you show this ad."
A collaboration between Australian robotics researcher Jaime Valls Miro and the global technology giant Yahoo is developing a location-based algorithm for mobile devices that would make your smartphone "aware" of its surroundings.
"Say, you're a tennis fan in front of a particular sports store and Yahoo knows (from your internet clicks) that you love tennis," says Associate Professor Valls Miro, from the Centre for Autonomous Systems at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
"As you pass the store you might find a special offer on tennis gear at that very store 'pushed' to your mobile device from Yahoo."
Researcher Mitesh Patel, from Yahoo Labs in California, says so-called "contextual awareness" presents opportunities for business owners through the quantitative and qualitative information that can be gleaned – "for example, the amount of foot traffic and where in the store customers spend most of their time" – and even a better customer experience.
Contextual awareness in shopping centres and city landscapes is key to providing highly personalised services and will be generated by sensors in the mobile device and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacon infrastructure.
BLE is a communication technique based on traditional Bluetooth but with very low energy requirements. "You can put a beacon somewhere and it will keep going for two to three years," Dr Valls Miro says. "The beacons, which constantly emit unique location-related information, are also small, cheap, easy to install and infrastructure independent."
This emerging technology hasn't quite reached Australia but Dr Patel says it is increasingly used in the United States. "BLE is already used in smart devices like smartphones, smartwatches and fitness devices and there is the potential for its widespread adoption in applications like payment systems, micro location, security and proximity. Many companies, including Eddybox are working towards developing solutions for applications that use BLE technology."
These ethical questions are of great interest to Michael Fraser, director of the Communications Law Centre at UTS. He can see the benefits but thinks laws to protect people and their privacy have not kept up with the rapid development of these powerful technologies and this should be addressed.
"I think it raises questions for all of us, as to how much privacy we're willing to give up in exchange for these services and for targeted advertising – particularly in Australia where many people might be surprised to learn that we don't, at this time, have a legal right to privacy," Professor Fraser says.
He believes we need to think about these questions early in the design phase and build in the capacity for consent and proper regulation before, rather than trying to catch up later.
With such large sums of money at stake, the march of technology will almost certainly progress as swiftly as ever, and whether the law can catch up or not, one thing is almost certain: BLE will be coming to a shopping centre near you soon.
(Read More: phys.org/news/2015-10-smart-smartphone.html)
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