Whilst it is impossible to predict the future there are a number of trends at the cutting edge of location and positioning that tell us what the topical issues of today are and hint at the direction things may go in the future.

Firstly there is the explosion in new GNSSs coming online. Combining measurements from them will lead to improved performance as well as robustness and ubiquity. However, we have shown that GNSS is vulnerable to attack and there is also some debate about whether so many systems will begin to interfere with one another. So whilst GNSS technology continues to advance there is also a significant amount of work going into relative positioning systems for special applications. These systems combine the best of radio signals and other sensor measurements in order to extract meaningful information about the relative position and location context of people and objects. In high-end general applications these systems will be combined with GNSS in order to provide seamless coverage indoors and out.

Of course on the technology side we must not forget about visual and imaging systems. These mimic the way we as humans perceive our environment better than any other, and with ongoing rapid advancement of image processing technology they promise to be a key component of future positioning and localisation systems.