Category: Navigation

Exploring GPS Alternatives

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In March the FCC issued a Notice of Inquiry to explore GPS alternatives, citing increasing threats to the resiliency of the existing GPS network. GPS World worries that the U.S. may limit domestic access to non-U.S. navigation systems (Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS), which many devices support, for security reasons.

Breathless coverage in TechCrunch for one such alternative, Tern AI, a startup that promises GPS-free navigation. From what I can gather, it relies on a combination of car sensors, onboard maps and dead reckoning, helped along with a liberal sprinkling of AI fairy dust, to arrive at a fix within a few minutes. Now, I’m reflexively skeptical of all things AI, so I’m not holding my breath; this sounds like a modern-day Etak Navigator with machine learning.

A joint project between Australia and India, involving RMIT University and space firm SkyKraft, is exploring setting up a regional navigation system based on low-earth orbit satellites.

GPS on the Moon: I’ve reported previously on the idea that Earth-orbiting GNSS satellites could be used for lunar navigation. The tech company GMV announced results of field testing for the LUPIN project, which aims to bring navigation to the moon based on lunar-orbiting satellites. Neither the press release nor the coverage (Engadget, Reuters) is particularly revealing, though.

My, that’s a lot of vague press releases.

Adventures in Unpreparedness

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Two recent cautionary tales about the risks of going forth without proper navigational tools. First, I’m a bit confused about this BBC News report, which cites what3words as coming through when a boat broke down in the Channel Islands area:

[The rescue service] said although the vessel had no working on board GPS and an inoperative VHS radio, crews were able to establish a position using the location app “what3words”. […]

The coastguard said an operator was able to translate the vessel’s what3words location from a mobile phone into latitude and longitude.

Now hold on: if you’re able to use what3words on a mobile phone to get a fix on your location, it’s because your phone has a built-in GPS, so it’s not like they didn’t have access to GPS. More likely is that they couldn’t figure out how to get lat/long coordinates to rescue services in any other way. (It’s a long press on your location in either Apple Maps and Google Maps, but to be fair, that might not be obvious or easy to figure out for the first time in the middle of a crisis.)

Meanwhile, an unprepared hiker without a map who got lost in New Hampshire will likely be billed for the cost of his rescue.

Rivers & Roads: The Art of Getting There

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Almost missed this. Rivers & Roads: The Art of Getting There is an exhibition in the corridor gallery of Harvard’s Pusey Library that runs until 31 January 2025. It’s about getting from point A to point B over the centuries, and that hasn’t always meant using a map with a grid system. For more, see the Harvard Gazette’s interview with the exhibit’s curator, Molly Taylor-Poleskey.

Jobs Requiring Spatial Memory and Navigation Associated with Low Alzheimer’s Mortality Rates

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A population-based study suggesting that people in jobs that require real-time spatial processing—taxi and ambulance drivers—have the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s-related death comes with a bunch of caveats and is reluctant to draw a direct correlation. Per Euronews, people good at spatial processing may be at lower risk regardless of whether they use that skill driving ambulances and taxis. Also:

Independent researchers pointed to a few of those factors, including the fact that the taxi and ambulance drivers in the study died on average around ages 64 to 67, while Alzheimer’s onset is typically after age 65.

Further, few of the drivers were women, who are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than men, and the analysis didn’t consider genetics or include scans that could show any changes to the brain as a result of their jobs.

So this is a long, long way from being able to say, for example, that driving a taxi prevents Alzheimer’s.

Previously: London Cabbies’ Unique Brains May Help Alzheimer’s Diagnosis.

Remembering MapQuest

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The tenth installment of James Killick’s “12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World” series focuses on a company James actually worked at: MapQuest, which grew very, very rapidly between its launch in 1996 (James outlines its antecedents) to its IPO and acquisition by AOL a few years later. And then:

The new management seemed to have very little interest in anything to do with MapQuest, particularly as it related to product road map and strategy. And with the layoffs and hiring freeze there weren’t enough resources to do anything substantial even if there was a good plan.

I tried to make matters clear and pleaded with the powers that be: MapQuest was a site built on map data but it didn’t make maps. In fact 98% of the map data was licensed from third parties. I knew MapQuest had to build a moat around the product otherwise someone else could swoop in, license the same data and build a better product.

And you won’t win any prizes for guessing who did.

Previously: Remember MapQuest?

Terse Directions

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Adding to the discussion as to whether online maps’ directions are too exhausting, Tim Bray argues for terse directions: “When I’m navigating an area I already know about, don’t give me turn-by-turn, just give me a short list of the streets to take.”

Right now, Google Maps insists on turn-by turn, with three warnings for each turn. It’s dumb and annoying and interrupts whatever music or show I’m listening to.

What I want is to get in the car and say “Short directions to New Brighton Park” and have it say “Take Main to 12th to Nanaimo to 1st to Renfrew to McGill.” Then when I’m driving, I’d get one vocal warning a block out from each turn, like “Next left on Nanaimo” or some such.

Previously: ‘Map-Splaining’.

‘Map-Splaining’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Modern online maps have so much data under the hood, and provide an overabundance of detail, that they can’t help but bombard the user, The Atlantic’s Ian Bogost argues, coining a term for their “sheer exhaustiveness”: map-splaining. It’s a challenge to take all that data and make directions comprehensible.

The maps know that one road is five lanes wide and the other six; both have medians. They understand that right turns between the streets can be accomplished via dedicated merge lanes that skip the red light. They appreciate that two lanes allow left turns between each of these streets, facilitated by a left-turn-arrow traffic signal. Having all this information helps the maps give their step-by-step instructions: Take the first turn lane from northbound 28th Street, then a quick right into the parking lot for Flatiron Coffee. That level of precision may be convenient for some drivers, but it comes at the price of breaking down the built environment into lots of extra segments and transitions that may trigger the display of useless routing information. Perhaps the software should just be telling you to “go past the light and make a left.”

Quantum Navigation

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Quantum navigation systems are being tested in Britain. Last month there was a successful test flight of an aviation system, and a system is being tested on test trains on the London Underground. (It’s not clear to me whether these systems are related, but the U.K. has apparently been making a big push into quantum tech lately.) Quantum navigation is essentially quantum mechanics applied to dead reckoning, using the properties of supercool atoms to measure change of position. The advantage of the system is that it’s self-contained: it doesn’t require a GPS signal or navigation beacon to triangulate from, which makes it resistant to jamming or spoofing—and considering how essential real-time location data has become, and how easy it is to disrupt location signals, the appeal of a self-contained solution is self-evident.

Online Maps Roundup: April 2024

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Custom route creation and topographic maps are rumored to be coming to Apple Maps in the next iOS release, iOS 18. Google Maps has had custom routes since approximately forever; on Apple Maps we’ve had to choose between Apple’s generated routes without being able to edit them.

Google Maps announced updates focusing on EVs (EV charger search, nearby chargers in the in-car map, suggested charging stops, forecast energy consumption) and sustainability (lower-carbon travel options rolling out in 15 cities, estimated flight emissions). Also, Street View came to Kazakhstan last month. Meanwhile, Ben Schoon at 9to5Google says that while Google Maps on Android Auto is “a pretty solid experience,” it’s a different matter when you use Google Maps via Apple CarPlay, an experience he calls “a bit of a dumpster fire.”

Google-owned Waze announced updates last month that include roundabout assistance and notifications for the presence of emergency vehicles, speed limit changes, and things like sharp curves, speed bumps and toll booths [TechCrunch].

The History of Etak Navigator

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

It used a vector display and cassette tapes for data storage. It was too early for GPS; instead it invented a process called “augmented dead reckoning” that snapped the car’s position back to the known road grid whenever you made a turn. It was the Etak Navigator, and it launched back in 1985. James Killick explores its history in the ninth installment of his series, “12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World,” with some surprises in how it influenced later GPS-based navigation systems (among other things, Etak eventually ended up in the hands of Tele Atlas). See also this 2015 article in Fast Company.

Previously: Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation.

Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The 1995 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight was the first production car in North America to be offered with an on-board navigation system, Guidestar. Car enthusiast website The Truth About Cars recently ran a six-part series on the road to that release, exploring General Motors’ earlier, experimental attempts at in-car navigation. The series starts with the very experimental, 1960s-era DAIR, which would have relied on in-road magnets; parts two, three and four of the series look at TravTek, a system combining (still-scrambled-for-civilian-use) GPS with road sensors that was tested on Oldsmobile rental cars in the Orlando, Florida area in the early 1990s. The series ends with a look at the background and development of the Guidestar system itself.

The Lost Art of Map Reading

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“The physical map has the same appeal, probably, as the vinyl record. It’s tactile, it’s there, it’s present—it’s not ephemeral.”

A nice piece from CBC News on the so-called lost art of map reading and paper maps, touching many of the usual points, featuring (among others) the co-owners of my local map store, Ottawa’s World of Maps.

The Soviet Space Program’s Remarkable Electromechanical Navigation Device

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Front-facing view of a Globus navigational device from a Soyuz capsule.
Ken Shirriff

You must see this. Ken Shirriff got his hands on an example of a navigational device from a Soyuz spacecraft and opened it up to see how it worked. Known as a Globus (its proper name is Индикатор Навигационный Космический—roughly, space navigation indicator), it’s an incredibly complicated marvel of gears and cams, an electromechanical analog computer that showed the capsule’s position on a physical globe. The position was predicted—the Globus received no navigational data. Ken’s got lots of photos of the innards at his website. See also his Mastodon thread. He has hopes of getting the thing operational, so keep an eye out for that.

(Based on the presence of NASA tracking sites on the globe, Ken thinks this particular unit was meant for the Apollo-Soyuz program, but I kind of wonder whether that was a function of the 1967 Rescue Agreement between the U.S. and the USSR instead.)

The Mercury capsule had something similar for a while: the Earth Path Indicator. One example sold for nearly $100,000 in 2019.

Online Map Roundup for January 2023

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Apple Maps

Apple Maps now provides parking information for 8,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada.

Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool for businesses to upload their information to be used by Apple’s various apps: not just Maps, though that’s obvious (and something Google has been offering for quite some time: see James’s post for context). More at Ars Technica.

Google Maps

The first cars to get Google’s enhanced maps (previously), which include things like traffic lights and stop signs, will be the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3, via Android Auto.

Meanwhile, turn-by-turn directions on Google’s Wear OS smart watch platform will no longer require a connected smartphone.