Google maps to navigate inside as well Google has launched indoor maps in Australia allowing users to find their way around airports, shopping centres, train stations and other large buildings using their mobile devices. The indoor Google Maps technology, which uses nearby Wi-Fi networks and mobile towers rather than GPS to determine your location, will from Wednesday be available for 200 indoor locations. The indoor maps automatically appear when you zoom in on a building using the Android app; Apple support is not yet available. At launch the most popular venues are shopping centres with many Westfield, Stockland and Centro floor plans covered, among others. The list also includes 10 train stations (such as Flinders Street) airports (Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide), several IKEA stores, sports venues (Hisense Arena, Rod Laver Arena, Etihad Stadium, ANZ Stadium and others) and several cultural venues including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW and the Sydney Opera House. Australian Google Maps product manager Nabil Naghdy said the plan was to rapidly increase the number of floor plans, and business owners could upload their own plans to Google. "It's like having an indoor directory in the palm of your hand helping you work out where you are, what floor you're on and how to get to where you want to be," he said. At present only a "handful" of venues support the "blue dot" that approximates your location on the indoor map. Google must do surveys of each venue to determine users can be located to within a few metres. The technology largely relies on nearby Wi-Fi networks as conventional satellite technology doesn't work inside or even in some built-up outdoor environments. Around the world so far about 10,000 floor plans have been added to Google Maps in countries including the US, Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Spain, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada and Belgium. It comes as Australian engineers at firms such as Navisens, the CSIRO and University of New South Wales are leading the world in developing advanced indoor navigation technology capable of helping you locate specific products on supermarket shelves, tracking athletes' performance or guiding visually impaired people. "Location-based services are part of the next revolution of smartphone and tablet applications," said CSIRO's research director for wireless and networking technologies, Dr Iain Collings.