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 Voice Navigation

30th September 2002

 Reviewed by Dave Burrows, Mike Barrett

 

One thing that everyone seems to be raving about when it comes down to GPS software now, but nobody seems really too bothered about what it sounds like is Voice Navigation.  It started a while back with PowerLOC's Destinator, now TomTom Navigator uses Voice Navigation, and so does Navman's latest offering SmartST Pro.

 

So what's it all about then for those who don't have it ?

 

Quite simple really, when you approach a junction, or round about in the planned routed journey, the Pocket PC Navigation software will play a Windows WAV file to give you directions.  What happens is that most voice sentences are broken up into single word entries and saved as a WAV file, so you will have something like GO RIGHT AROUND THE ROUNDABOUT as one audio file, you would also have a second audio file saying SECOND EXIT or THIRD EXIT.  What the software will do is seamlessly glue these together to produce a sentence, so what it sounds like is GO RIGHT AROUND THE ROUNDABOUT SECOND EXIT.

 

Sounds simple really ?  Well it is, and with the advent of faster Pocket PC's, voice navigation will get much more complex allowing for entries like YOU ARE DRIVING ABOVE THE SPEED LIMIT, SLOW DOWN. Or YOU ARE DRIVING THE WRONG WAY, TURN AROUND IMMEDIATELY.

 

Voice Navigation really is in it's infancy, give it a couple of years and we'll have a superb system.  You won't even have to look at the Pocket PC, you'll be able to blank the screen, save battery power and complete your journey by voice navigation.

 

 

 

PowerLOC Destinator

Sample 1

TomTom Navigator

Sample 1

Navman SmartST Pro

Sample 1*

 

PowerLOC Destinator

Sample 2

TomTom Navigator

Sample 2

 

 

As you can hear by clicking on the above sound files, the navigation quality is pretty good, and when in car driving, they come out very clear and precise.

*Note

Due to Navman not using WAV's we have had to resort to using an open microphone to record the sound, rather than using the full quality audio.

 

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