31 July,2016 09:09 AM IST | | Agencies
Australia will adjust its latitude and longitude, a government science body says, to put the vast country into alignment with global navigation satellite systems
Sydney: Australia will adjust its latitude and longitude, a government science body says, to put the vast country into alignment with global navigation satellite systems.
The nation's coordinates are currently out by more than 1 m, Geoscience Australia says, and the discrepancy could cause major headaches for possible new technologies such as driverless cars which require precise location data.
"We have to adjust our lines of latitude and longitude... so that the satellite navigation systems that we all use on our smartphones these days can align with all the digital map information," Geoscience's Dan Jaksa told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
He said smartphones were already accurate to within 5-10 m, but shrinking the gap would be crucial in coming years, particularly with greater use of remotely-operated vehicles in farming and mining.
Australia's local coordinate system, the Geocentric Datum of Australia, was last updated in 1994.
