navigation | urbantick

The Simpsons Have a GPS

By: admin_urbantick

12-04-2010

This is something one could predict from the start. They hade to bring this joke into the Simpsons TV series and now they have, or better had, a GPS navigation system for their car. And yes driving the kids to school is quit difficult and definitely requires a friendly assistant’s voice to guide one through the horrible traffic on the streets of Springfield. I particularly like the line “decrease elevation ten feet, then turn left!” Funny enough the GPS is capable of switching between imperial and metric system on the fly, not bad!

Found via MapRoom, GPStracklog, waze at gawker.

And by the way, TomTom offers a Homer Simpson voice over for your own inCar navigation system. Just make sure you don’t get distracted by it and swirl off across a building site. Also don’t forget to bring the calculator for the conversion on the fly.
Visit www.tomtom.com/simpsons, the voice skin is available to download now for £7.95 or 9.95 euros. A snipet can be heard here:

Might Light Show You the Way

By: admin_urbantick

12-03-2010

Uncategorised

This week a new guidance system for the ‘Quartier des Spectacle’ in Montreal was officially unveiled. It is a light projection based signal system to help visitors find their way through the cultural district. As part of its Lighting Plan, the Quartier des spectacles is exploring the possibilities of light for creating signage and expressing identity. A recent pilot project experiments with projecting light onto the pavement to mark the urban landscape. This intervention, realized as part of the Montreal All-Nighter, reinforces the brand image of the cultural heart of the metropolis by bringing together light and graphic design.

Image taken from Quartie des Spectacles on flickr

The basic idea really to guide pedestrians and after having seen the ultimate promotion clip on the culture district’s website one knows why pedestrian guidance might be needed, this is a busy place. There are a lot of events and activity generally happening simultaneously and a efficient and in this case fun tool to support orientation is definitely a great way to go about it.
It very much reminds me of the street gaming project last year that was organised in three competing cities in the UK. Coverage HERE. They also used light projections to guide the players. In addition the game also responded and recorded the players performance, guess the interactivity for the Montreal project could be extended beyond the synchronization with the traffic lights. But still a very interesting project that surprises. The project was realized in collaboration with the City of Montreal, particularly the Bureau des festivals et des événements, the Service de police (SPVM) and the City’s traffic experts, Artistic Directors: Ruedi Baur + Jean Beaudoin, Intégral.

Spatial Search – Spezify

By: admin_urbantick

13-01-2010

Uncategorised

We all use it and without it no one would actually be able to really use the internet. The digital world of linked pages containing information has grown so dramatically that already twelve years ago it became impossible to navigate without navigation aids.
Solution had to be found and a new startup firm was leading the way into a future of searching – Google. Over the following years, the management of knowledge became the ultimate service gem. Google rose to transform into the biggest internet company. Of course they don’t only help find internet users find the content they are looking for (or finding at least something), they also are the biggest online advertisement company. This is kind of the ‘making money’ side of the management of knowledge. It is not that you know a lot, but that you can relate the knowledge conveniently to what others might also need.

Image by urbanTick / screenshot showing search results on spezify with the search term urbanTick and playing an urbanTick clip directly form youtube.

However, the search engine interface of the Google website is just one of the search tools. Google provides similar tailored search services for all kind of networks and websites. For example you can click to the right of this text in the third column where it says ‘Custom Search’ and find the content you are looking for directly from the urbanTick blog, all provided by Google.
So there are lots of different things searches are good for, but there is one thing I am really getting tired of the bloody list of results. How boring is this? We are all talking about mapping and location based services, networks and clusters, dynamic objects and relationships, responsible environments and individuality, visualisation and graphics, but all we get is a list.
Yes, I agree it is the simplest and most plain way of ‘listing’ the results. It seems that Google has even removed the time line graphic I described earlier in another post, which I was really excited about, is now transformed to be a list. I know, there are a lot of issues with all aspects of time and this might not be the best example for not having a list but nevertheless new visualisation methods are needed. Google has made an attempt at changing this at least for image and video content by acquiring/developing coolIris, but here again it is a (nice, interactive) three four row list.
Can you imagine how excited I was to come across this new service specify? It is absolute crap and can’t be used for a decent web search, ahh sorry it depends on what you are trying to find, but it comes up with a surprising new concept of showing the result. It displays the content spatially scattered across the screen and you can drag it with your virtual hand and move around on the plain to crawl through the result. Together with the newly announced all body gesture input technique (that actually works – article by the NYTimes) presented this week by Microsoft for its all new gaming platform Natal this could then lead to a real life body experience of virtual search. People would really start wandering off through the results, picking up the results that seem interesting and real-virtually putting them in their pocket, to later pull them out again as the fit with a new blog post for example. The results are all displayed as icons or previews of the content, media content from youtube or vimeo can be played directly from the search result which is nice. It can be called a spatial search experience, since the contend is scattered across the surface. However I am not sure about the organisation of the results spatially and there is definitely room for improvement as the additional dimension adds room for additional criteria. It also operates at the moment a very simple structure that even allow for a address that can be understood e.g. http://www.spezify.com/#/urbantick – try it out yourself and experience what ‘googling’ the internet could feel like.

If you feel like seeing the tutorial clip on youtube first before trying something so radically new – scared eh? – watch this

GPS Signal Jammed by the Pentagon

By: admin_urbantick

29-10-2009

Uncategorised

Actually the GPS signal can be manipulated, who would have guessed otherwise? The system being a American Military Defense innovation initially, this is one of the strategies implemented to prevent enemies using the system against US targets. The other system implemented was the selective availability (SA) restriction imposed on the signal for civil, e.g. non military, use. Today a large variety of digital gadgets are equipped with a GPS receiver, ranging from in car navigation systems to mobile phones and cameras. This was kicked of by the former president Bill Clinton’s decision to lift the imposed selective availability (SA) restriction in 2000 (Prasad 2005, p.7). Following the SA removal, civil and commercial GPS accuracy increased from around 100m to somewhere between 3m and 15m (Pendleton 2002 as cited in Spencer Spencer 2003, p.56).
However to come back to the temporal and local jamming of the GPS signal holds still a very important status in the strategy of US military action. This is that the European system Galileo is still under construction and its partial launch will not be until 1012 or beyond. The other functioning system is the Russian Glonas. However this is not covering the entire planet with constant signal as it only operates from 18 satellites (2008) covering Russia. In this sense the US holds a monopoly on this location based information system.

Image taken from Wikipedia

The jamming of the signal is normally not know to the public and only speculated over. However it is very likely that it is used in current war zones, like Iraq and Afghanistan. There are reports over this jamming to be found on the internet.
Computerworld has an article on the subject quoting some GPS experts on the matter. “Sam Wormley, a researcher at Iowa State University in Ames and manager of an authoritative GPS resources and accuracy Web site, said that the Pentagon “definitely” has the capability to jam civilian GPS signals in a given area without interfering with more precise military signals. Wormley said that’s because the military signals occupy a different and smaller slice of the GPS frequency band than that used by the civilian signals.” The jamming most likely is achieved through a slight desincronisation of the clocks. For military purpose this can easily be decoded.
There are very funny discussions going on out there on the web around the possibility of jamming satellite signal. A good one is on yahoo.answers.com, where some guy accuses his neighbor ‘Joe’ to jam his satellite dish, because when ever Joe is home the guy thinks his TV signal is disrupted.
Thinking this further, how do we know that the actual position is correct? As we have seen in the introduction of this post, as well as in last weeks new Argos catalogue, consumer GPS products have become immensely popular and everyone needs to know where they are. Whether this is true or not in this case is probably not that important. So to say, we don’t know if the represented location on Google Earth is actually the true position as in lat long, yes we can see that this image shows the street we’re in, but the structural framework of the Lat Long coordinate is not necessarily the ‘right’ one. But I guess this is the question of the artificially impose grid that we can only virtually refer to and belief in as a convention.
So next time you end up in New York, rather than the planned Newark because of a spelling mistake while typing it into the gadget, you can blame the US for temporarily jamming your specific satellite. But if you are after your neighbor here are some web stores where you can purchase your own satellite jammer to annoy your ‘Joe’.

However I wanted to link a creepy James Bond extract, where the space craft swallows the satellite, but you guess it is not out there yet. So if anyone has this sequence laying around please upload and link it here.
However I therefore link to a very boring but scientific clip that actually visualises the GPS signal availability in Kabul during the course of one day. The scientist, Richard Langley, a professor of geodesy and precision navigation at the University of New Brunswick has observed the predicted position of the satellite versus the actual signal strength in the are and there seems to be clearly a jam. However, that was recorded back in 2001, but most certainly this has taken place before and after, as well as in other places than Kabul too.

Clip by Richard Langley – Kabul.GPS.Visibility.mov

Are we Losing our Sense of Direction?

By: admin_urbantick

22-10-2009

Uncategorised

Are we losing our Sense of Direction? What a rhetoric question. Without the context this does not really make sense, or does it?
Usually as things are starting to be fun, some one comes over to tell you how bad this is and that you should not do it because of this or this or even this reason. At least it was like this when you were a teen, battling for independence with beloved ones.
However this is long gone and things have changed since. And still the same situation. But now we are wiser and think twice, maybe it is true, or at least partially, there might be something about this other opinion I have not thought of in this way.
Here we re with the news, finally, GPS is BAD!
Yes, you are right, your SatNav is doing harm to you as you drive. At least this is what the headlines of the news on the New York Times blog and the walrus magazine suggest Actually it is all based on an article by Alex Hutchinson.
We actually have an other SatNav article her on urbanTick, that addresses the problem of arriving at the desired location but in this case it was about spelling the destination name correctly.
In general Alex Hutchinson points out in hi article that navigating is a learning process that is a dual relationship between brain and action. The more we use it the better we are at it, but it needs to be maintained.
Scientists have identified an area in the brain, the hippocampus, to be responsible or this sort of navigation task. “The brains of London cabbies have outsized rear hippocampuses, because they are required to painstakingly learn the byzantine lanes and byways of the Old World city. (NYblog)” Most of us will not attempt to learn the apparently 25’000 street names and thousands of landmarks required for becoming a cabby. However navigating and orientating do not necessarily require you to know all the names of the streets. Other elements are important in day-to-day navigation. Hutchinson refers to Veronique Bohbot a researcher at McConnell Brain Imaging Center: “Bohbot demonstrated in a widely cited 2003 study that our mapping strategies fall into two basic categories. One is a spatial strategy that involves learning the relationships between various landmarks — creating a cognitive map in your head. The other is a stimulus-response approach that encodes specific routes by memorizing a series of cues, as in: get off the bus when you see the glass skyscraper, then walk toward the big park. For their study, Bohbot created a virtual maze that tested both methods; they found that about half of us prefer spatial strategies, while the other half prefer stimulus-response” (walrus magazine). We probably use both of these techniques depending on the situation, but most likely we prefer one over the other. What navigation type are you?

Mouse in Matrix – How Mental Maps are Made

By: admin_urbantick

20-10-2009

Uncategorised

How do we create mental maps? In a story the New Scientist reports new development in the area of brain studies. The research was presented in nature in September 2009.
Over this question scientist have long speculated. The involved brain areas have long been identified, but the how was still subject for debate. Apparently the region in the brain is called hippocampus. The problem so far was that recording the activity required the subject’s head/brain needed to remain fairly stable and this is not possible for normal navigation. The New Scientist reported earlier initial findings related to the brains spatial navigation activities.
Reportedly after paying Quake II researchers came up with the idea of using a virtual reality surrounding for the experiment to record brain activity while navigating.
Researchers at Princeton University developed a Quake based VR environment for rodents as well as a special navigation ball on which the rodents could run (in a stabilizing harness to keep them relatively still) and navigate the VR maze. Basically they created a mini IMAX for the mouse, reports wired.com.
They were the able to scan the mouse’s brain activity as it learned to navigate the maze. Some treats along the way helped I guess.
However, there is little information on what they have actually found. At the moment the main interest seems to be the technique how they used to record the brain activity, so mainly the VR for mice set-up. It looks fancy though.

In these experiments scientists are not really interested in how and what the brain records and how participants (in this case mice) actually understand the maze or the environment they have navigated. Here they simply assume that this is taking place. They are talking about a mental map but are just looking at activity as ‘space’ is navigated. To some extend this is only implicit looking at how the memory and sense of place is building up. History is always biased by the fact that it is in the past and it is remembered back from a present state that might be rather different from the past and this influences the way the memory is recalled. Some sort of processing is taking place and the result is a weighted remembering. Through this the history has a present relevance, but is not ‘true’. In this respect the mental map as a review of the maze experience is probably a rather different case than the activity of navigating it. Let’s wait and see how scientist interpret the rodent’s sketch of the maze…

Integrated Videos and Maps for Driving Directions – Microsoft

By: admin_urbantick

19-10-2009

Uncategorised

New development on the navigation gadget front. This time it comes from Microsoft and that is in it self a bit surprising. So far the company has not been closely linked with navigation. In general they are trailing behind everyone, generally trying to improve the stuff other have developed and promoted. In this sense this ‘new’ development has to be looked at.
The research featured as an article on Technology review this week where its chef researcher Billy Chen introduces us to the concept. They are using video for driving directions. Instead of Google Street View, they are playing video recordings of the route in Microsoft Virtual Earth. The research is partly about the recording and synchronising of the map a video, but partly also about the influence of this method for direction instructions. The results of course claim that the animated instructions enable participants to find the route easier, with 70% to 60% for participants who were instructed only with image (Google images I presume).

PastedGraphic.Ays8GbTlrxqM.jpg
Image by Microsoft – (a) Original spacing of panoramas. (b) Final spacing of video frames, after slowing down at landmarks/turns and speeding up between. (c) Straight ahead orientation. (d) Final orientation with look ahead. (e) Widening the view and freezing the landmark thumbnail.

However, the paper written about the project can be found HERE. It has to be noted, that it i not simply a replayed clop. An important feature of the software is the way it focuses on landmark and guides the users view files. It is not a passive record that has just followed the movement. Rather it is a carefully calculated section of the 360 Degree recording. Through this movement emphasis is put on certain aspect along the route, say a landmark. This means that the route somehow has to be processed and interpreted. How quickly and with what kind of system the software can be rolled out is not clear,

Getting Lost With the GPS

By: admin_urbantick

29-09-2009

Uncategorised

When have you gotten lost for the last time? It must have been a while. The art of getting lost has got lost itself nowadays. The sense of not knowing the exact direction to a familiar object, place or location can be very unpleasant. On the other hand it can be very reliving. If you are prepared to accept that you have lost control over the situation or at least the location you might find yourself enjoying it.
The idea of stoling through the city, not directed by a specific destination is a concept introduced by the Situationists. The aimless wandering or derive, as it is called in the Situationist writing, can even be a method to observe the city.
However, people also get lost not on purpose. The marketing campaign of a number of companies make us aware of a lot of possibilities we could get lost and with this fuel a lot of people’s fears of the immediate surrounding. In car navigation has become the number one gadget in car sales, it has overtaken the air condition feature or the CD player.

Image by Fischer Portugal for Honda / promoting Honda’s Compact Navigation System.

People seem to enjoy being talked through the environment, and then it all depends on the voice. I assume gadget developers put a lot of thought into the voices they offer as the direction instructor. Even how it is said must be important. In a recent interview Bob Dylan has announced that he is in talks with GPS manufacturers to lend his voice for a next generation of Gadget. Click here for a sample of his voice. I am still waiting for the vice over that starts shouting at someone who just missed the turn for the fourth time. “You twat, can’t you follow instructions! I said turn LEFT!” The other way round, people shouting at the in-car-navigation-system are probably quite common.
The BBC has recently collected a number of stories of people getting lost with the GPS. Due to a software fault : ) the GPS will not correct your spelling mistakes. And it seems that people quite often misspell their destination. And a little knowledge is still needed to distinguish between Capri and Capri, as a Swedish couple have learned after they arrived in the Industrial Town of Capri instead of the island Capri in Italy. via GPSCity

GPS from DustFilms on Vimeo.

TomTom for the iPhone – update

By: admin_urbantick

24-08-2009

Uncategorised

TomTom announced its navigation software for the iPhone earlier this year at the WWDC. It was a blog post and it also was somehow exciting. It is only two and a half month later and the software is published but it is all not that exciting anymore. It might be a great software and with no doubt it works fine, but since the introduction of the 3GS at the same WWDC, so much has changed on the mobile gadget market. Only this month the introduction of the crowd sourced traffic platform WAZE was introduced in the United States and layar opened up AR layers for a broad range of uses. In fact AR has been the big topic for mobile phone platforms and Android is leading as an AR platform at the moment. TomTom has not yet announced anything for the Android platform.
Anyway, one software can not do everything we are well aware of this, but this now pushed the iPhone with its “can not run anything in the background” policy to its limit. If I ever will use the TomTom on my iPhone I want to have the WAZE live traffic update on top of it to give me up to date information and why not having some user generated stuff as AR blobs on the screen as well. For me all this fits together and will hopefully eventually merge into something I would more likely call a “navigation” software.

Augmented Reality Navigation from Robert Winters on Vimeo.

So navigation in the style of AR would be exciting, but the ever so normal (we now definitely got used to it) “after 200m turn right” TomTom is not exciting anymore, Nevertheless here is the latest TomTom clip to sweeten the waiting for the actual iPhone car kit.

The company has not yet announced the release date for this important element of in car navigation. In fact this is really funny but theoretically the software is somehow useless without the car kit. Of course some clever guys came up with a solution.

Found through GPSobsessed

Digital Tourist Navigation – teigo

By: admin_urbantick

14-08-2009

Uncategorised

Location based information and urban navigation on the iPhone. A project develop at Gobelins l’Ecole de l’Image as a diploma project by five graduate students, Damien Odet, Myriam Penot, David Miège, Léo Chéron and Adrien Felsmann. It is not sure when it is gona come out but it looks really interesting.
Already graphically it looks beautiful. It is built as a digital guide that gives you location based information in several different layers. The history layer might be particularly interesting. It is a very formal history layer at the moment with information taken from school books. But looking back at the post about virtual notes, an additional layer with user generated short term history could be very interesting. It would enable you to see what the “tourists” last week have spotted, local outsider knowledge could start building up.

Teaser Teigo from Teigo on Vimeo.

This is what the developers say: “Teigo is a new generation urban guide consisting of a mobile phone application, an interactive wall map and an internet site. It offers a cultural and fun way to discover or rediscover a city. The prototype was produced for the city of Paris, but versions for other cities are planned.
To relive the historical events of places you visit, Teigo leads you along thematic itineraries during which you will receive interesting tourist information including places to eat and local events.
Teigo is made for the curious – city dwellers and tourists anxious to discover or rediscover a city. The service is available on several mediums in order to adapt to the largest possible number of users, whether technophiles or not.”

— urbantick

The Simpsons Have a GPS

Might Light Show You the Way

Spatial Search – Spezify

GPS Signal Jammed by the Pentagon

Are we Losing our Sense of Direction?

Mouse in Matrix – How Mental Maps are Made

Integrated Videos and Maps for Driving Directions – Microsoft

Getting Lost With the GPS

TomTom for the iPhone – update

Digital Tourist Navigation – teigo

About

Archives

Categories

BlogRoll