A new system has been developed by a firm in Gloucestershire, England, and is set to revolutionise the way people find us.
Universal Beacon ( www.ubreg.co.uk )- a new system created by barrister Malcolm Warner & his daughter Beatrix can identify global locations to within about 1metre. So if you pitch a tent in the Sahara and give a pizza restaurant your location their drone should be able to deliver your margarita in time for lunch!
Using maps and text both of which can be changed at anytime means that if the weather changes for an event it can be moved and the change notified in a few moments.
Universal Beacon uses a very personalised way of communicating a vast array of information such as:
ex/picnic@@uberg.c.uk
lost@@freddy.i.uk
glasto@@happygirl.i.uk
It all looks very much like an email quite deliberately so that people are familiar with this way of sharing information but it has some key elements:
The @@identifies it to the public as a UBReg when they see it (e.g.for a delivery company).
Universal Beacon has its own “domain” system of names so people can choose a name like “freddy” or “apple” which makes it much more memorable-take for instance your forename and imagine handing friends a UBReg with that on it. It makes it personal and as I understand it you can have as many as you like.
There are a wealth of other features built into this surprisingly simple looking package which include that it allows your phone to act as a satnav to precise locations, which can allocate car parking space or place for a tent at an event like Glastonbury simply because it is so accurate.
It facilitates drone deliveries by day or night because they can be delivered with pinpoint accuracy (e.g. Drugs to a doctors surgery). And so on! An app is in the course of development but the facilities are fully operational now.
Universal Beacon do charge for the service, it is a business after all! But they do not advertise or sell data nor is the service being built up to sell it for Billions to one of the high tech giants such as Apple or Google.
I understand the Warners want to stay providing a public service as an independent UK company. It certainly isn’t expensive, for individuals it is £1.00 or the price of half a cup of coffee so hardly earth shattering and Universal Beacon are at least up front about how they fund the service.
Clearly there are many benefits such as Drone deliveries of medicines to difficult to get to locations in war torn countries. It also helps the planet by cutting down wasted delivery journeys because the driver couldn’t find an address first time around.
It can give an address to refugees in a new camp in words familiar to them but also allow you to find the front door of the right unit on an anonymous industrial estate. Universal Beacon hope to assimilate it into microchips for pets.
Perhaps the homeless might at last be able to have a way of having an address where they can always be located by their friends or social services and other people seeking to assist them?
This system developed by a British Company is another move forward for mobile communication and does seem to offer something quite revolutionary.
Innovation is what sets the United Kingdom apart from many other countries with a disproportionate number of inventions and concepts coming from its shores.
I wonder how many people realise as an example that experimentation was considered central to innovation by the Royal Society which was founded in 1660. The English patent system recognised intellectual property for the first time and encouraged invention. It largely brought on the industrial revolution. Today over 57,000 patents are registered at The British Library in London.
A few of examples of Britain’s longtime lead in innovation can be found in that the first navigable submarine was designed in 1620 by Englishman William Bourne. In 1635 a tin can telephone was first devised by another Englishman, Robert Hooke, who was born on The Isle of Wight.
Possibly the most important invention or discovery of them all was the Internet. In 1989 Sir Tim Berners-Lee born in London invented The World Wide Web.
When Beagle 2, a British landing spacecraft that formed part of the European Space Agency’s 2003 Mars Express mission landed on Mars but failed to communicate it was effectively ‘lost in space’ it was located twelve years later in a series of images sent out from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor.
Universal Beacon and their new system of pin pointing mobile addresses may not have helped there but nonetheless is yet another in a long line of British inventions which benefit the world.