It's not laser mapping at all. I have some contacts on the dev team, and had a hands-on demo of the unit.

The Lighthouses are actually more of a "ping source", where they broadcast a bright IR sync flash, followed by a rastering modulated laser beam. So it's like a movie clapper board saying "Ok, I'm starting a raster sweep NOW (clap)", and the headset waits for the laser sweep to hit each of the sensor receivers. It detects the different lighthouses by the modulated signal in the laser sweep. Knowing the sweep rate of the lighthouses, and timing the difference between the receptors, it calculates the X/Y/Z/ of each sensor. Wicked cool.

I was surprised by the effort they had to go through to get very smooth running motors (thanks HD motor manufacturer technology!) to reduce the jitter.

I concur. Just back from a 2 week trip to San Francisco from Canada, and my Canadian Bell (unlocked; rooted) Galaxy S connected on EDGE speeds for pretty much the whole time (darn mountain ranges...).It was supposed to be only 2Gig of data, but I got an SMS mid way through the trip that informed me that my plan was updated to unlimited data. It was the "Prepaid Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB data plan" for $70. We got 2 SIMS with this plan (a T-Mobile G1 on HSPA fast speed, and my Canadian Bell Galaxy S maxing out on EDGE), and one with just talk/text (for daughter) for $30.

Although the G1 is a slow phone, I found the GPS unit superior, and it made an excellent Google GPS navigator. Also worked well as portable wifi hotspot with the rooted "Open Garden" application. And don't forget to load up GasBuddy too.

Just make sure to add the $10 "International SMS" option if you plan to message out of the USA. Frustrating to get SMS from home, but not to be able to reply!

FYI, both my G1 and my Canadian Galaxy S both get HSPA speeds in Hong Kong!