Technology Metro

Since the cost of microchip went down, almost everything from cars and other day to day use items are being embedded with microchips to do simple or complex tasks. Cars and other vehicles has been fitted with lots of technologies to make the driver’s life much more easy. GPS is one of the widely used visible technology fitted in a vehicle today. There are lots of other areas where technology is embedded in vehicles like engines, gearbox, suspensions etc which make the car much more safer and responsive to drive. Lots of these technologies are coming in from car racing and they do a lot of research on how to use technology effectively on their racing cars.

Well, GPS is not that widely used system in racing cars but still some of them use it to track exact location of their racing car when on a race and analyze the racing line it is taking. Well, normally we see the use of GPS to navigate the city streets but there is another application that uses GPS system, GPS Vehicle Tracking System. GPS tracking is very useful if you have a teenager who has just got a license. You can monitor his movements by usint GPS vehicle tracking. This is also useful if your vehicle was ever to get stolen. Other possible use for GPS vehicle tracking is integrating GPS tracking system for rental car companies. There is already a company in existence which uses this kind of technology to rent its vehicles which is based in greater London area. Networkcar.com provides this kind of service for any and all kind of customers, be it for home use of for commercial use. They provide around the clock vehicle monitoring service which is done remotely. They monitor the performance of the vehicle, the location its at in real time and also the security of the vehicle.

GPS which is known as Global Positioning System in full is a device that lets you know the almost exact latitude and longitude you are in at that moment of time. GPS was originally developed by the United States Department of Defense for military use (for accurate navigation in unfamiliar area, target tracking etc) but now as there is no cold war, the GPS technology is now available for use by everyone who can afford a GPS receiver. There are a lot of practical uses for the GPS systems like map making, land surveying but the most now a days GPS is widely used for traveling like Car Navigation and to find location while going on hikes. Car Navigation GPS systems are the widely used GPS function today as most of the cars and other automobiles in the United States has a Car navigation system installed. Here are the very basic details on how a GPS system works.

• GPS receiver calculates its position using four or more GPS satellites (Three satellites to calculate the distance and the fourth one to provide accurate time for that particular location)
• For finding out just the location, three satellites can be used.
• GPS consists of three things, on earth orbit satellites, a controlling and monitoring station and a GPS receiver.
• GPS satellites broadcast its signal through space which are picked up and identified by GPS receivers and receives latitude, longitude, altitude and time

This is basically how a GPS works. Ordinary people can Buy GPS receiver at most electronic retailers. One of the first uses of GPS when it was readily available to the public was its application in the aviation. The price of a GPS receiver was still quite high and not many people could afford it. As time passsed by the price of a GPS receiver dropped a lot ( as does all electronic device). Now it is readily available at stores and the price is very affordable. Now GPS receivers are even used as a Fish Finders for large fishing boats and ships. GPS has come a long way since its conception. GPS is a US based technology and now lots of other countries and continents have developed their own like the Galileo Positioning system by Europe, GLONASS by Russia, Compass navigation system by China and IRNSS by India but US based GPS is the widely used one.