GPS Puzzle Box: It started out as a wedding gift…

It was originally born as a wedding present from a university researcher who wanted to surprise his friends, but GPS Puzzle Box, in fact, could have a potential for many more applications in several fields.
It is a real modern version of the “treasure box” we read about in many adventure books, with the difference that it is not protected by a secret code or hidden in some faraway island, but it will open automatically only when it is taken to a specific place.

The GPS Box is a carved wooden box, of the sort you would find in any Middle Eastern street market, but on its lid it sports a display and a button.

By pushing this button, you will be able to see the distance from the point where the box will automatically open (but not the direction!). the button can be pushed up to 50 times, and once you reach this limit you will no longer be able to open it, so a bit of logic is required to find out the right direction to take.

It looks very easy like this, although the practical usage of such a box might fail some of us. The prototype was born as a wedding present, concealing a USB key with some books in PDF format, and the opening location was a place dear to the newlyweds.

But just try to think that such a system, if applied for example on a safety suitcase, could be used to send documents of an extremely confidential nature, and making sure that they are opened and read only in the right place and by the right people.

At this point, applications for this GPS security system could be practically endless… and yes, they might even include a wedding present!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 5:37 PM and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.