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Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

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Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#61

Post by e28eta »

sedachv wrote: post #45
Arizhel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't want navigational assistance. The only time I drive without my GPS is if I'm going somewhere I go frequently, along a route I normally travel, and it's a short distance. Any place new, and I'm using GPS, and even if I'm going someplace familiar, and I'm familiar with the route, if it's a good distance away I use the GPS anyway to make sure I don't miss a turn and also, very importantl…

> I can't imagine why you wouldn't want navigational assistance. Here is why I look up directions in advance in almost all situations: * GPS is a distraction to maintaining awareness while driving, motorcycling, and bicycling. * Navigational assistance does not help you when walking, taking public transit or taxis. Using GPS while driving prevents you from learning the layout of the place you are in which transfers t…

I know how to read a map. I have a good memory. I have a good sense of direction. I did a fair amount of driving before getting a smartphone/GPS. I delivered pizzas for ~3 years, and I'd look up the 1-5 houses on our paper maps at the store showing every street, nearly every house by number, most of the apartments by number, and then memorize the route. I drove cross country a couple times with basic AAA maps and printed Google Maps directions.

I'll defend using GPS on my phone to navigate. It provides a couple benefits that I really enjoy.

1. It knows what is ahead of me before I do. Specifically traffic, where it sometimes provides useful re-routing (although I dislike Waze's re-routing). Also, Waze's user reports can be helpful to warn about debris in the road, etc.

2. It has a consistent interface. When driving in an unfamiliar location, being able to look in one place to see if the next street is the one I need is way better than trying to find & read every street sign.

3. It has a voice interface, which I believe is safer than trying to read my handwritten notes or the printed google maps directions as a driver.

4. I appreciate seeing the current Speed Limit, displayed by Waze.

5. It greatly reduces the cost of missed turns. I hate seeing cars cut across multiple lanes of traffic (or even just one!) at the last minute to make their exit.

The GPS does make it easier to navigate. I think that frees up more of my attention to focus on other aspects of driving: watching the cars around me, looking for pedestrians, cyclists, and other hazards. I believe that actually increases my awareness of what's going on around me.

I agree that not everyone becomes a better driver when using GPS, but I think they could.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#62

Post by shagie »

Another system from back in the days of pre-very accurate gps: The advanced snowplow program http://www.path.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/documents/i... and from archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20070112182654/http://www.path.be...

Picture driving a snow plow in the California sierras in whiteout conditions. On one side of you is a steep cliff with no guard rails (not that guard rails would - the snow is higher than the rails).

So, they embedded magnets in the road that had data in them (the way they were organized):

> Two primary technologies are being used in the ASP: detecting the plow's position relative to the center of the lane, to assist the operator in steering; and detecting obstacles, for collision warning. PATH's magnetic marker guidance system provides guidance information. This system was developed for automated vehicle guidance and control applications. A single magnetometer array comprised of seven magnetic sensors was installed at the front of the snowplow. Signal processing of the magnetometers provides lateral position measurement relative to the center of the lane, longitudinal position relative to mileposts, and yaw angle estimate. Binary coding of the magnetic markers when installed (north pole up vs. south pole up) also provides information about roadway characteristics, e.g. the direction and radius of the curves. The obstacle detection system uses a commercially available Eaton-Vorad radar, incorporating a digital interface developed by AHMCT in conjunction with Eaton Vorad.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#63

Post by civilian »

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #59
civilian wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's the thing: If you use GPS, you aren't going to build up your mental map of your city. But if you go without GPS, then you will work towards building up your mental map, and it kind of snowballs. I really like to: Look up directions on Gmaps, and then jot down the relevant turns I need to know onto a piece of paper. The idea is that Gmaps tells me 20 or so turns, but I really need to only know a highway exit…

Personally, I don't care that using a map would make me a "better navigator" the same way I don't care that driving stick would make me a "better driver." I don't enjoy driving at all, it's purely a mean to an end, so I'll take any aid that would make the experience more pleasant, and / or reduce my cognitive load. If I ever start making FU money, and fully self-driving cars are not yet a reality, I would definitely…

But I mean, it's not about enjoying driving. It's about being an attentive and safe driver. One of the things my Driver's Ed class went over is that: Even if you are the victim of an accident, there's a decent chance that there is something you could have done to avoid it. Things like: Making sure you have 2 of your 4 directions clear, leaving extra space, and watching other drivers.

I think you're wrong that GPS reduce your cognitive load. It reduces it in the short term, but in the long term you are always listening to and referencing an noisey/bright device. In the long run it's a tax, and so it hurts your ability to be an overwhelming safe driver. This is an N=1, but I'm 30, and I'm a bit of a fast driver, and I've never been in an accident.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#64

Post by DigitalJack »

avar wrote: post #21
mmastrac wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about 20% of the population could not cope with a map that wasn't aligned with the direction they were going That's me. I have a tough time orienting maps in my head. I still use a mnemonic for compass directions and (occasionally) use my left hand as an L to make sure I'm not screwing it up. I don't know if there is any research into what the structural differences of brains that suffer from this might be, let alo…

> I don't know if there is any research into [needing to > reorient maps when driving]. There is! One thing it's highly correlated with is whether you're either a heterosexual woman, or a homosexual man. There's a really good description of this and other brain attributes correlated with gender or male homosexuality in the BBC show "The Making of Me - John Barrowman". This specific part starts around 6m30s in: http:/…

I'm an exception. Terrible sense of direction... My sister in law is an exception too. I swear she had a virtual map in her head that was always perfectly oriented.

I actually prefer having a GPS map north up, so that I can train my brain to have a non-relative mental map so that once I orient myself to the compass I can figure out where to go.

As it is, my mental map bears little resemblance to reality.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#65

Post by CalChris »

Stan Honey is a legend in sailing as well as in technology.

He's won the Jules Verne trophy as navigator, fastest round the world (48 days). He's won the Volvo. PacCup with Nolan Bushnell. Rolex Yachtsman of the year (his wife Sally has won twice). He did the NFL line effects, same for NASCAR and NHL. He did the Americas Cup effects. He did Sailmail. Multiple patents.

And he's an incredibly nice guy. Dennis Connor is the best American yachtsman, but Honey ain't far behind.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#66

Post by kuschku »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #53
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single mapping app has to implement some kind of mapmatching, since you can't rely on the GPS sensors to always be accurate: the GPS position is frequently wrong when you're moving between cell towers , and can be lost for several seconds in cities. Nokia/HERE's implementation (which I was told was very similar to tomtom/garmin's implementation) was written more than a decade ago, and IIRC, every time it encoun…

> the GPS position is frequently wrong when you're moving between cell towers , and can be lost for several seconds in cities. You seem to be thinking of cell tower triangulation, not GPS. I do agree that GPS also does not do particularly well in areas with large buildings: it needs a clear view of the sky which can be hard to come by when there's skyscrapers everywhere.

Actually, nowadays GPS rarely is used by itself.

Instead, you use A-GPS, which is GPS with additionally communication with a server for accuracy.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#67

Post by ams6110 »

Arizhel wrote: post #42
learn_more wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you train yourself to use a static orientation however, you develop a much better "big picture" awareness of the city you drive in, eventually freeing yourself from requiring navigational assistance. The additional cognitive load is worth it for me.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't want navigational assistance. The only time I drive without my GPS is if I'm going somewhere I go frequently, along a route I normally travel, and it's a short distance. Any place new, and I'm using GPS, and even if I'm going someplace familiar, and I'm familiar with the route, if it's a good distance away I use the GPS anyway to make sure I don't miss a turn and also, very importantl…

I find that if I use GPS/Nav to get somewhere, I have no real awareness of where I am or how to get back. Having spent the large majority of my life without a smartphone (or a mobile phone of any kind) I don't really like that feeling.

If I look up where I'm going in advance, or use written instructions, I can generally backtrack to my origin without too much difficulty.

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#68

Post by jmcdiesel »

theamk wrote: post #6

FYI, here is a part which is still relevant today: "the system continuously ironed out accumulated errors over time by comparing actual distances driven and turns made with road shapes on the map. Honey calls the technique "augmented dead reckoning." That means driving through a long stretch of straight highway could begin to trip up Etak's system, since there were no turns and no distinct roads for the computer to a…

Airliners used the same basic system for a long time... and it was, in fact, an airline incident that lead the US gov't to declassify GPS so trans-oceanic flights could be tracked better.

To this day though, when I pilot starts up an airliner, they fire up that old system as a backup, its programed down to the gates at the airports, so they set their departure gate and as soon as they start moving, it tracks, through gyros, the whole flight. There can be a lot of drift in the system though, which is what lead to KAL007 being shot down by the soviets, killing almost 300 and prompting Reagan to declassify GPS to prevent that same kind of thing from happening again...

Re: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System

#69

Post by zb »

DonHopkins wrote: post #26

"Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that its map data, some of which was first digitized back during the Navigator's development in 1984, would live on to this day." The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning the data originally digitized at Etak is interesting. At the time, there were only two digital map companies: Tele Atlas (from which TomTom got their map data) and Navteq (from which G…

The other really remarkable thing about that time for me (I was working for a TomTom competitor) was that Nokia also paid a whopping US$8.1 billion (€5.7 billion) for NavTeq. This was right before Google ate both companies' lunch by switching to doing their own mapping for Google Maps using the Street View cars. The iPhone was announced about 6 months later.
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