  Future wireless communications are promising to support ubiquitous
connections and high data rates with cost-effective devices. Benefiting from
the energy-efficient elements with low cost, reconfigurable intelligent surface
(RIS) emerges as a potential solution to fulfill such demands, which has the
capability to flexibly manipulate the wireless signals with a tunable phase.
Recently, as the operational frequency ascends to the sub-terahertz (THz) bands
or higher bands for wireless communications in six-generation (6G), it becomes
imperative to consider the near-field propagation in RIS-assisted
communications. The challenging acquisition of channel parameters is an
inherent issue for near-field RIS-assisted communications, where the complex
design is essential to acquire the informative near-field channel embedded with
both the angle and distance information. Hence, in this paper we systematically
investigate the potential of exploiting location information for near-field
RIS-assisted communications. Firstly, we present the progresses in the
near-field RIS-assisted communications, which are compatible with existing
wireless communications and show the potential to achieve the fine-grained
localization accuracy to support location-driven scheme. Then, the Fresnel zone
based model is introduced, with which the location-driven beamforming scheme
and corresponding frame structure are developed. Also, we elaborate on four
unique advantages for leveraging location information in RIS-assisted
communications, followed by numerical simulations. Finally, several key
challenges and corresponding potential solutions are pointed out.
