Nav Systems and Personalized Geodata
Honda is showing off a new GPS with weather info and social networking system (via Engadget). This is a lot like Goole & Volkswagon’s proposed nav system.
What is really exciting is the ability to load up personal POI. For example, I am going on a road trip and want to get all my favorite restaurants, WiFi locations, friends’ houses, and hiking trails for Michigan and sourthern Canada. This could be a GPX file, or GeoRSS feed from Mapufacture.
The Garmin Nuvi supports this using their POI Loader, which will take a GPX or CSV file and load it onto our GPS. The Nuvi looks really great, but is an external solution. Built-in navigation systems offer better integration into the interior and usually better sensors. For example, my Prius (Akius) has in-wheel hub sensors for integrating distance traveled when GPS isn’t available. Now if only the in-car navigation systems (which cost a bundle more, on an order of magnitude) offered similar functionality, upgradeability, and best of all: hackability.
My name is 
October 17th, 2006 at 1:49 pm (#)
The ‘benefits’ of the Honda system are hard to discern. Most people will find that looking out the window gives them all the weather info required. As for flooding and snow-bound routes, it will of course depend on the inputs, not just some vague description of the weather provided by a national weather service.
The VW/Google system appears more useable at first blush, although again, I’d say that gas prices are not time-sensitive. I can look up and down a road and decide if I want to drive an extra 150 yds to save $0.01 per gallon. Again, it depends on the inputs, and there does not seem to be any discussion of those.
While integration with a vehicle’s interior or drive systems is not to be underestimated, I think you are overstating the benefits. Portable nav systems can interpolate distance, and continue to work even when out of satellite range. Remaining out of range for an extended period does cause problems, but it is rare that you would be without a signal for 10 miles, right?
Finally, for those of us with (or about to be with) portable nav systems, the cost savings, ability to install after-market entertainment components, retro-fitting to older cars, transportability to rental cars, and most important, interoperability with our Macs or PCs are strong arguments for a non-manufacturer nav system. Granted, Garmin’s POI loader is not yet Mac compatible (!), but it is easier to upload and evalute travelling salesman-type challenges when you can connect your nav system directly to your home computer.
I like that companies recognize much more can be done with these systems, but I think they’d be better off for now focusing on things that require an update every 6-12 months instead of 6-12 minutes.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:02 am (#)
I should add two more things:
1. You can hose the portable’s entire file structure (less than 2 hrs of ownership — New Record!) and then buy a new one, replaced the hosed files, and return the duplicate. Try that with a Prius.
2. You can sit in the comfort of your own home drinking beer and watching football while tinkering. I suppose you could do that with a built-in, but I hear things get coolish in Detroit during October…
My main point is that we use these tools because people are fundamentally lazy. We could learn to fold a map, but there’s a flashier (better?) way. We could just trust that one of the next exits will have a Steak ‘N’ Shake or Krusty Burger, but we’d rather look it up for sure. The problem is that the time sensitive information requires some type of updating action, and you can’t always expect the people who have the information to update the information. Their motivations are different from the consumer’s motivation, and neither party agrees on when the information is most useful.
I think one of the most useful things about GeoRSS and GeoPress is that it packages and collates information that is readily available and provides it in a useful way that can be presented in a multitude of formats. Something like this could be integrated into nav systems, but you’ll have to show the information suppliers that it is worth the extra cost.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:03 am (#)
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