Mapping company Navteq's recent announcement a that it intends to create automated driving instructions cued by landmarks is likely to shake up the digital maps world. Currently, turn-by-turn global positioning systems (GPS) guide drivers using closing distances:a voice says, "Turn right in 200 metres," for example.
Chicago-based Navteq is building a database for instructions that will instead say something like, "Turn right before the yellow shop." Its camera vans are prowling the streets of world cities taking photographs of roadsides so that analysts can pick out banks, petrol stations and any other salient features that might help in giving this new style of oral guidance.
Navteq made the announcement in Berlin, which happens to be the epicentre of Big Brother fears about private enterprise mapping. Search giant Google has taken a beating from German privacy officials this year over its Street View photo panoramas, which are a supplementary feature to its Google Maps.
As it happens, commercial camera cars have been cruising German cities snapping everything in sight for decades. The newspaper Die Welt reported last month on the Bollmann company whose cars have taken millions of automated photographs of 100 cities including New York and Jerusalem to help its artists draw the birds-eye-view maps which Bollmann publishes.
There was a flap over Bollmann in 1999 when jittery police spotted a Bollmann car as it photographed the home of a German chancellor, but the company managed to convince authorities it had no sinister intent. Navteq began surveying US cities, initially with pad and paper, more than 20 years ago. Automated cameras took over later. Its principal international rival, the Tele Atlas division of Dutch company TomTom, has been surveying European cities since 2004 with vans fitted with six digital cameras to soak up the surroundings.
Sandra Van Hauwaert, a Tele Atlas spokeswoman, said, "We send the images to India where they are processed." They are converted into geometrical images of the road. She said she was not aware of any plans for Tele Atlas to develop guidance cued from landmarks.
Germany's government has summoned the geo-data-collecting industry, including Google, for talks on whether blanket photography poses a threat to privacy. Navteq has confirmed it will be part of those discussions.
The new-style guidance comes from the realisation that people do not always understand what sat-navs are telling them. There have been legion stories in the media of people driving into forests and danger zones because they thought a GPS had told them to. "It talks to me in terms of metres. We decided to solve the problem by capturing data about the environment," said Pauli, who predicted that "humanised" route instructions would especially appeal to the middle-aged and consumers in emerging markets.
"We have found baby boomers are interested in new technology, but people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are not necessarily attracted by complex user interfaces," he said, pointing to a key problem with dashboard displays and abstract driving instructions.
In emerging markets such as India, driving instructions based on visible features were also likely to make a better fit with actual street conditions, for example in a city which "does not have a sophisticated street-naming system," he explained. Senior executive Frank Pauli added that in adapting the system to India, Navteq has found drivers were far more aware of religious buildings such as temples and mosques than westerners, who tend to orient themselves by petrol stations and banks which they see from the driver's seat.
Navteq, does not make sat-navs itself but supplies map data to GPS manufacturers and mapping portals on the internet. "We are in discussions with a number of manufacturers," said Pauli, adding that he does not expect the new service to show up in devices immediately as it will take some time to integrate it into the products. He predicted consumers would see it in 2011.
Navteq has already thought about the obvious problem with the softer style of instructions: that landmarks might be demolished, signs might change and growing vegetation might obscure the cues. Salient features will be guided according to their visibility and permanence. Buildings that are hidden in summertime behind deciduous trees will be counted as less useful for the "Natural Guidance" database. Pauli also billed the system as improving road safety.He said it will help drivers keep their eyes on the traffic instead of having to look at dashboard displays to interpret audio instructions.