Make sure your GPS journey is smooth

01.01.70

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Everyone seems to have a parable about their GPS giving bad directions or taking them somewhere they had not intended. Western New York is no exception.

When traveling on the Buffalo Skyway, my GPS in truth thinks I am next to it on Fuhrmann Boulevard. It told me to make a right turn even though I obviously can't.

So why did this happen to me?

Adel Sadek an Associate Professor in the Control of Civil Engineering at the University at Buffalo says “Possibility for what we call multipath errors. The signal coming from the sidekick to the receiver might suffer some bouncing from nearby buildings.”

These multipath errors are also common in situations similar to mine where you have roads of dissimilar elevation crossing each other. Higher profile vehicles, like SUV's, can cause errors as well since you are higher off the ground.

But there are steps you can take to ban GPS errors from happening.

“Updating maps I think is key for using these devices. Sometimes local knowledge is in many ways superior to what a gismo can do. People need to use common sense sometimes whether the route that the device is giving them makes sense or not.” Says Sadek.

Source: WIVB

Route 66 release first Augmented Reality Navigation App

01.01.70

Avenue 66 release first Augmented Reality Navigation App

Article by: Mike Barrett
Date: 24 Nov 2011


Back in February at Flexible World Congress we saw a revolutionary new navigation product from Route 66. It has been nine months finalising the software getting it subject to for release. Well today is the day!

Route 66 Maps + Navigation with Follow Me is a bit of a mouthful, but does describe the new Android application exactly. What makes this so different from from any other apps is the fact that it is the first to integrate augmented reality into navigation.

This is achieved by superimposing the steering on top of the view from the phone's camera. To do this the phone needs to be mounted on the windscreen with an unobstructed view of the road forwards.

Once the camera is started the route is overlaid on the live image, when you start to move you will see a mini just ahead of

Source: PocketGPSWorld.com