The development of Vehicle navigation systems

With the development of navigation systems, the demand for map data has grown massively. Cars with a large number of sensors and 360 degree photographic - or even laser-capturing capabilities, drive around cities to digitize the world. Accordingly, existing markets have to adapt to this new technology. In the real-estate business, data is collected for every building: photographs, ground plans, etc. Something on the order of a million in-car GPS navigation systems are being installed each year ( rear-view mirror car dvr camera, rearview mirror navigation ). Not only do these systems allow navigation based on the static facts of where the roads go but also on the dynamic facts relating to where the other traffic is. Tokyo will soon benefit from such a system. In addition to vehicle route guidance, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) will provide other benefits, such as fleet vehicle dispatch and tracking, and emergency notification of police and tow trucks. Before you cheer too loudly, however, realize that without proper safeguards, Big Brother may know where you are, where you are going, and how fast. Already, automated systems exist in the Unites States that scan license plates of speeding cars and send a ticket to the owner.

Position is the knowledge ofyour location with respect to your surroundings with a degree of precision that meets your requirements. A mouthful of words to be sure, and seemingly as vague as a politician's promise, but actually surprisingly useful. A GPS can generally indicate your position within 15 meters, or 50 feet on the high end, and often is accurate to 10 meters, or 30 feet-sometimes even closer. This precision is an astOnishing technical feat, and useful. But that information is completely useless if you are standing confused in the middle of a sea of forest, ifyou will pardon my temporarily mixed terrains of metaphor. Accurate numbers do nothing for you unless you know that they mean you are about a quarter mile from a cache and a five minute walk up the trail from your car.

Knowing your position doesn't guarantee knowing your orientation, which is your alignment with your surroundings. When you approach an intersection in your town, you know which way to tum because you are familiar with the area and know that a right will take you to the river, and to your left is a shopping district. In the woods, though, you may not have that practiced degree of orientation. Take that walk up the path to the cache, find it, then start heading back to your car. If you come to a trail intersection, you cannot pick the correct branch-even ifyou have a map-without proper orientation, because you don't know ifyou are turning east toward the hills or west to the parking lot. Intended direction is the way in which you want to travel. A compass and Rearview Mirror GPS can provide a location and orientation that can be transferred to a map. None of this will do much good if the mapped area is totally covered by forest and you don't know in which direction you need to walk to reach the cacheor your automobile and dinner.