Deduction of Vacant Technology through Patent Analysis in Disaster-Safety Positioning Technologies

In recent years, the positioning technologies have been recognized as core technologies for realizing smart space, a ubiquitous society, context awareness, and various location-based services, which are based on the geo-spatial information. Compared to the past research trend that concentrated on the provision of geo-spatial information based on the location, it has been expanded to all industries such as distribution, port logistics, automation, robotics, and safety accident prevention in dangerous areas. Consequently, more objective oriented researches and analyses are required for satisfying growing various needs and it is needed to analyze the existing research and development (R&D) status on the positioning technology. In this paper, it is intended to understand the existing R&D status on the positioning technology field from the patent perspective through performing patent analysis on the disaster-safety positioning technology, and thus finds and estimates the future R&D area by deriving potential promising areas where patent applications are not active. According the results of patent analysis, the technology to improve positioning accuracy through the convergence between IR-UWB and CSS was analyzed as a vacant technology area. In addition, the geo-spatial information estimation technology and the low power positioning technology were concluded as vacant technology areas to be actively researched and developed in the future among required element technologies in order to realize the positioning technology using IR-UWB.