Suggestion: Teach Mode..?

[BrianT]

Maybe it's been suggested before but here goes..

Say you're on a brand new road or one that's obscure enough (but important to you) so that it's not on the Navman maps. Say this is not the first time you've been on that road and you'd like it in with the supplied maps.

How about if at the start of said road you could click on your current position and in the drop down select 'Teach Mode'. From then until you click again (probably when you arrive at a road included as part of the Navman maps but not necessarily as in the case of a dead-end) and select 'End Teach Mode' the software would record your twists and turns and store it in some sort of overlay file. That file would then be included in all routing functionality thereafter.

Any comments?

Regards to all,

Brian in Geneva.

[neilb]

sounds like a good suggestion to me.

[BrianT]

Thanks, neilb.

Over lunch a friend suggested that if such a site (this one..?) could/would accommodate such a thing then people could upload their 'overlay' files so that everyone else could download what they wanted - to the greater good of the entire community.

How about that?

Cheers, Brian.

[DavidW]

I appreciate that the idea seems superficially attractive, but it is, in fact, loaded with problems.


Firstly, the GPS receivers we have in our systems are not survey grade receivers - we can be running with a positioning error of 20m. We'll know little about it because the software uses various techniques to 'snap' our position to the nearest road.

When EGNOS is operational later this year, then running with SBAS mode on will give a 2m horizontal confidence interval 95% of the time (that means that 95% of the time the indicated position is less than 2m from the real position) - but that's still far from survey grade. SBAS reception from moving land vehicles isn't always possible, particularly as most of us don't use a roof-mounted GPS antenna - the geostationary satellites used are fairly low on the horizon to the south.

If you could survey a road 20m off in one direction, and the next user comes along with a 20m error in the opposite direction from true, the chances are that that'll be well outside what the 'snap to road' functionality can cope with.


Second is the problem of keeping data pure. Using the sort of system described, road status information may not be kept up to date - for example roads that are known as usually OK for a short cut (service roads off and onto motorway service areas, also private roads) could find their way into people's map data when they're not public rights of way.


Third is the problem that it's not just the road shape that matters - there's various metadata in the mapping database. These include things such a road name and road type (which has to be accurate to get routing preferences correct), also whether or not the road is a toll road. Whilst it's arguably not strictly metadata, there's also information on the junctions along the road - which exit number it is off a roundabout, whether it should be described as 'bear left' or 'turn right' and so on.


Fourth, even a single change in the mapping probably means all the indexes for the map data need to be rebuilt - which I would think is an operation that takes considerable computing power.


However, the idea that kills this dead are the licensing issues from the geodata providers. Dave gave some information on this in a thread to do with M6 Toll not being in TomTom Navigator 2. See [url=http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4842]here[url] for that thread - it's the last post from Dave on the first page. If you scroll down to the bottom, then scroll up until you see the PocketGPS 'avatar' in the left hand column, that's the post I mean.

It simply is impossible to allow user modifications to geodata for licensing reasons - you're generating derivative works which are almost certainly banned by the licence agreements under which the geodata was provided.


What would be possible is a 'report a problem here' feature built into the software - possibly with an on screen menu of possibilities, or an 'other' option - and the ability to come back to the report later, add the kind of details you can't do when driving, and then send that to the company responsible for your product (when you next synchronise, perhaps). It wouldn't be too dissimilar from the way that CheckPOInt 2 works inside TomTom Navigator 2 - though that's for speed cameras rather than map errors.

To my mind, this would seem a very useful feature - a chance to provide information directly on problems that could then be investigated. Further, a facility to submit the route if you have a routing problem would also seem worthwhile.


For now, all you can do is make the best report you can in the "map error" sticky thread in the appropriate forum here - and/or send the information directly to your software providers.



David

[neilb]

harumph!, fat chance of that when we can even get POI updates for speed cameras eh?

I love my Navman I do, it just seems that sometimes we get a rough deal compared to the tom tom users...

[BrianT]

Ah, I must admit, the way I drive the location of speed cameras isn't so important <g>

Tell me, do tom tom do something like I described or are their map updates more frequent..?

[DavidW]

The situation with mapping is no better with TomTom than with Navman. There's no way of reporting map errors directly, and updates are infrequent.

So far we only have the experience of one update - from TomTom Navigator 1 to TomTom Navigator 2. The new version came out about a year after the original, and the upgrade (which was new maps and updated software) cost 39 Euros. It's fairly clear that TomTom Navigator 3 is only the way, even though nothing has been announced officially yet. Only time will tell what is to come.



David

(who apologises for the botched link in his last post - somehow I missed that I'd left a / out when I previewed. Cut and paste will set you straight)

[BrianT]

Thanks for all the information, David, much appreciated.

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