Sears Holdings deploys mobile GIS navigation & mapping

- Gary Thayer, Editor

October 7, 2005 -- (MobileVillage) -- Sears Holding Corporation (SHC) has started using a wireless field geographic information system (GIS) system that provides 10,000 SHC home services technicians with an in-vehicle navigation and mapping system.

Prior to the mobile GIS system, technicians were still using paper map books and manual data tracking.

Developed by SHC and ESRI Professional Services, the Sears Smart Toolbox (SST) system leverages onboard GPS, satellite and terrestrial data communication, verbalized directions, and ruggedized laptop technology that makes available a touch-screen interface.

"Sears had the vision to deploy a digital toolbox with wireless workforce management, library information, and mapping and navigation system," says Daniel Bowman, Sears Smart Toolbox program manager. "We wanted to provide this technology to our field service technicians to improve their ability to serve customers and repair merchandise."

The SST application launches automatically when the ruggedized Itronix laptop, also known as the GoBook, is powered on. The entire suite of technologies runs within an Internet Explorer browser.

When the vehicle is stationary, the users have the option to view their daily routes, view their current progress along the route, geocode new stops, and make some modifications to their routes in the local database.

When the vehicle begins to move, the mapping component switches into navigation mode and takes over the entire screen of the GoBook. In navigation mode, the application displays the vehicle's current position on the route along with turn-by-turn navigation symbols and verbalizes voice directions as the vehicle approaches turns. In navigation mode, the technician is prevented from interacting with the application for safety reasons and must stop the vehicle to do so. The mapping and navigation functionality also allows technicians to add additional destinations, and optimize travel routes.

ESRI used ArcObjects software components based on ArcGIS to create the customized wireless field application. The ArcObjects functionality was extended by ESRI Professional Services to provide the required navigation and tracking capabilities. A nationwide Tele Atlas dataset more than 1 GB in size is used in each vehicle, and street data is updated every three months.

ESRI says its Spatial Data Compression format provides the storage capabilities for such large datasets. This eliminates the logistical hurdle of deploying different geographic datasets to different regions of the country, according to ESRI.

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