The end of car keys, passwords and fumbling with your phone at checkout

It could make it easy for us to control any connected light, lock, speaker or other smart-home gadget simply by pointing at it with our phone or watch. It could even, claim its architects, end passwords. — Technology photo created by DCStudio - www.freepik.com

For all the attention on tech companies and location tracking in recent years, our gadgets are actually surprisingly bad at knowing precisely where they are at any given moment. That's about to change.

A straightforward and robust technology, decades in the making, is finally becoming affordable and widespread enough to grant devices not just a basic sense of direction, both indoors and out, but also the ability to precisely locate themselves in three dimensions.