Posted On: Dec 8, 2021
Today, Amazon Location Service added metadata for tracking position updates to help developers reduce cost, improve accuracy, and simplify the development of tracking applications. Amazon Location Service Trackers already make it easy for developers to build highly scalable device-tracking applications by enabling them to retrieve the current and historical location of their tracked devices, and automatically evaluate device-positions relative to linked areas of interest (geofences). With the new metadata feature, developers can enrich these applications with additional information about each device’s position, for example the speed, direction, or engine temperature of vehicles, by including three user-defined key-values pairs with each position update. They can retrieve this information for a device’s current or historical position directly from the Amazon Location Service Tracker, for example to analyze engine performance, without building additional systems and code to track this data. Developer can also receive this metadata in the Amazon EventBridge Entry and Exit event when tracked devices cross a geofence.
The new metadata feature also enables developers to reduce the cost of their tracking solutions by including position accuracy with each update, which can then be combined with the Tracker's accuracy-based filtering to help assess whether the update is due to real device movements and not false position changes caused by imperfect measurement systems. The accuracy of position measurements vary based on, for example, the quality of the GPS fix or the limitations of different measurement schemes such as WiFi or Bluetooth. Developers can now enable accuracy-based filtering so that new position updates are not stored or evaluated against geofences unless the change in position exceeds the limits of the measurement accuracy. For example, if the first position measurement has an accuracy of 5m, and the second measurement has an accuracy of 10m, then the second position update is considered potentially unreliable and filtered out if its position has moved less than 15m. This reduces the cost of implementing a tracking application by reducing noise, spurious storage, and geofence evaluation of unreliable data points. This feature also reduces the effect of jitter caused by inaccurate positioning systems (such as mobile phones in urban canyons), reducing false geofence entry and exit events, and improves the fidelity of map visualization of position updates.
Amazon Location Service is a fully managed service that helps developers easily and securely add maps, points of interest, geocoding, routing, tracking, and geofencing to their applications without compromising on data quality, user privacy, or cost. With Amazon Location Service, you retain control of your location data, protecting your privacy and reducing enterprise security risks. Customers using the Amazon Location Place API can search for addresses and points of interest data from our high-quality data providers Esri and HERE.
Amazon Location Service is available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, and Asia Pacific (Tokyo).
To learn more about Amazon Location Service Trackers, visit the developer guide.