32.4 APPLICATIONS OF GPS

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The GPS receiver comes in handy whenever the location of any object is to be determined accurately. It is the most important navigational aid for nearly 17 million ships and boats. The GPS receiver also is becoming a common gadget in many cars.

If the GPS receiver displays the raw data of longitude and latitude, it is not of much use. The GPS receiver generally is integrated with a digitized map of the location in which the vehicle is moving. The digitized map contains the minute details of the roads, the important landmarks of the locality, and so on. The positional information obtained from the GPS receiver is correlated with the digitized map so that the user can get the information about where he is.

GPS receivers integrated with laptops and palmtops are paving the way for many fascinating applications. For example, the laptop can contain the digitized map of the area in which a car is moving. As the car moves, the route of the travel is displayed dynamically on the monitor. The user can feed in information regarding a destination, and the system automatically navigates the driver by displaying the route to be taken (one product has interfaced a speech synthesizer that will give verbal instructions such as "take a right turn at the next crossing").

Because of its small size and low cost, the GPS receiver is now becoming an integral part of cellular phones, pagers, and even digital wristwatches. GPS technology also finds applications in surveying, remote sensing, accident relief operations by traffic police, and ambulance service for hospitals. Needless to say, applications in the defense sector are many, such as determining tanker movements and target identification.

The most attractive application of GPS is navigation systems used in cars, aircrafts, ships, and missiles.

Note

GPS technology is very useful only if accurate digitized maps are available. To digitize the maps of different cities itself is a gigantic task.

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