There’s a tale that residents of Leonia, New Jersey, will likely share with their grandchildren. In 2018, police had to erect “Do Not Enter” signs on streets here, and hand out special passes to locals, as part of a crackdown on motorists flooding the town’s peaceful lanes. For months, the little enclave had become a recommended shortcut on navigation apps.
PREMIUM
The navigation app What3Words slices the Earth into virtual 3-sq-m blocks, for greater accuracy. Each square is assigned a unique three-word address.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
We are in a time of flux for digital navigation apps, and it’s not just the routes that are changing.
Since its last update in October, Google Maps can render landmarks in 3D.
In a dramatically different approach, American AI-led software company Affectiva offers to keep an eye trained on the driver. Since 2021, the Affectiva software integrated with the TomTom navigation system for cars uses a driver-facing camera to analyse signs of drowsiness (eye closure, yawning) and distraction (from other apps, or other people in the car). It then sounds an alert, in the form of an audio message suggesting that the driver take a break.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
Rerouting…
In the quest for greater accuracy, UK tech company What3Words is taking a radically divergent approach. It’s slicing Earth into 57 trillion virtual 3-sq-m blocks.
Each square is given an address, in the form of a unique combination of three words. Users can share a location pin or address with others, including those using other navigation apps.
“Once you download the app, you have all of the world’s 57 trillion three-metre squares and three-word addresses on your phone,” says co-founder and CEO Chris Sheldrick. Just point the app to the square you need, and you can’t go wrong. Once the app is downloaded, because it’s a pre-set grid, it will also work without data connectivity, Sheldrick says.
What3Words has its eyes on a larger landscape: Partnerships with global automakers and integration with in-car infotainment systems. In India, Mahindra Auto and Tata Motors have already done this. As have Mercedes-Benz and logistics platforms BlueDart and DTDC.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
What3Words is a novel approach, but for the rest, some foundational challenges remain. The world is changing all the time, and keeping even the most intelligent street view updated is an expensive, endless task. Which is probably why Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom united to form the Overture Maps Foundation (OMF) last year, in association with the Linux Foundation.
Earlier this year, OMF released its first dataset: an open-source map that can be used by anyone, to build or improve mapping, navigation or guidance apps. It is a work in progress and new versions will continue to be released.
In the map of navigation apps, then, we are here. The next few updates should be interesting.
All Access. One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Vishal Mathur is Technology Editor for Hindustan Times. When not making sense of technology, he often searches for an elusive analog space in a digital world.
