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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.
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