Navigation with a “human touch” from NAVTEQ
NAVTEQ recently launched a new product that promises to materially change the way navigation systems and applications interact with end users.
According to NAVTEQ their Natural Guidance system enables guidance the way humans provide directions to each other: Through the use of descriptive reference cues.
Launched at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, NAVTEQ Natural Guidance navigates through descriptions of orientation points such as distinctive points of interest and landmarks, for example “turn right at the traffic signal.”
NAVTEQ Natural Guidance enables applications to use recognizable and easily understandable points of reference close to the decision point to highlight the next maneuver.
“Natural Guidance provides the kind of directions we crave as humans,” said Tiffany Treacy, NAVTEQ senior vice president of product management. “It challenges the man-machine status quo of how navigation systems have worked for years by finally enabling the kind of guidance that sounds like it’s coming from a friend who is riding along with you.”
NAVTEQ Natural Guidance also employs a variety of importance criteria to help optimize when and how the guidance is presented to consumers. Reference cues can look very different, or be partially or fully obscured, depending on factors such as:
1. which direction the user is approaching,
2. the size of the reference object (a cathedral vs. a corner pub),
3. or whether it is winter or summer (when trees might block the visibility).
NAVTEQ Natural Guidance is currently available for Berlin, Chicago, National Capital Region of Delhi, London, Los Angeles, New York, Munich and Paris with aggressive expansion plans to add more cities throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific by the end of 2011.
Africa and Southern Africa are conspicuously absent from NAVTEQ’s plans for this product.
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