There are Maps for Phones
A phone is a personal device, and becoming increasingly so. Today, smarter phone models will contain a wealth of contacts, bookmarks, e-mails & messages, photos, music, games, etc., which the user builds up over a period of time.

On the geographic side with map data and navigation software, users are building a similarly customized experience. This personalization will include favourite navigation settings (e.g. which Points-Of-Interest to display, map perspective, map colours, routing method, etc), common destination addresses, geo-tagged photos, address book integration, the location of friends via their social networks, geographic bookmarks and placemarks, and other user-generated content. The user interfaces and tools are becoming available to make all of this easily manageable. Your phone can become more personal and valuable than your wallet.

In terms of the actually positioning process and requirements, many phone uses and applications only require a ‘good enough’ location, rather than high precision. This is particularly true when the person is indoors, where people spend up to 70 percent of their daily lives and GPS still has significant limitations. In such cases the knowledge that you are at a building or place will often suffice for many phone applications (e.g. local search, social networking), and the faster your location is returned, the better.

There are Maps for Cars
Car navigation systems and their maps follow many of the same evolutionary trends as phones, but with some lag that can usually be measured in years. Typically there is a lesser degree and scope for customization and personalisation of the maps, content and user interface, as several people may drive the same vehicle, and it will be sold on to new owners at some point. The navigation experience on the phone can be customized in meaningful ways that are not available to the users of in-car navigation systems. This customization is a major factor determining why people will prefer their phone navigation applications.

Great care is taken to ensure that the driver is not distracted by the excellence of the visuals on their navigation system. Navigation use will predominately occur in a driving situation, so clarity is paramount. You don’t really want someone who is driving a car to be admiring the quality of a 3D image of the Eiffel Tower, or they may end up interacting with said landmark in a more direct manner. By contrast if someone is sitting in a cafe with a phone trying to kill some time, it may be fun for them to access a 3D city model and fly through the air along streets lined with skyscrapers. Visually, many things can work with phones, and sometimes the more distracting or engaging the better, but with cars it’s important to get relevant, unambiguous information that can be recognised by the driver as quickly as possible.

Non-navigation applications such as safety (ADAS) and energy management, collectively termed ADASEM, have much different needs compared to navigation systems when it comes to maps. In these applications there may not be a visual element or primary user interface – the vehicle interprets geographical data and makes decisions by using systems and software that are a part of the vehicle.

Future maps for cars could be surprisingly simple. They require a highly accurate definition of all roads that the vehicle could potentially drive on, and perhaps 10-20 attributes (e.g. road class, current traffic, speed limits, and junction type) that are important to the safety and energy management applications foreseen. In effect these maps are skeletal and are not viewed by the driver, instead being directly interpreted by the vehicle. They contain much less substance than those used for Navigation, which are puffed up by visual enhancements and user interfaces.

For vehicle-related applications, map accuracy and coverage are important. In the future, maps will be seen as another form of physical sensor, and will sit alongside real-time sensor systems that are based on video cameras, radar, and other technologies. When the vehicle makes a decision it will draw on relevant inputs from multiple sources, to ensure the best and safest course of action is taken, in a process known as sensor fusion. The positioning of the vehicle must also be precise, and GPS augmented by accelerometers, gyroscopes or other components that ensure the most accurate position is given, together with the upcoming section of road derived from the 3D map.

Since these maps for ADASEM applications may well be part of the vehicle systems, it is unlikely that the user will be left to update them. In the phone world the user updates their maps when they feel like it (onboard), or they always have relatively fresh maps (offboard). It is foreseen that maps associated with vehicles are managed and updated per the servicing schedule, and by those qualified to complete the task. They will be very different maps, and as well as not looking like navigation maps, they will not need to be embedded and locked into navigation systems – other map hosting solutions will need to be found.

Continued...