Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
This would work fine, except in terms of success.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


           

Smartphone-Assisted GPS

Ought to help solve a pretty major navigation problem
 
(0)
  [vote for,
against]

I can't be the only one to have experienced this. You're driving along an interstate highway towards a destination, guided by a GPS app like Google Maps, Waze, or TeleNav. You screw up and take the wrong exit, say the one before the correct exit, and wind up on a side road paralleling the highway. You're so close to the highway that the GPS doesn't realize you've left it and therefore won't tell you how to get back on or optimize directions to your original objective from your new position.

So I'm imagining 2 ways for such an app to use the smartphone to solve this problem. One would be to use the camera, provided the phone is in a dash mount, to 'see' what you're doing on the road and direct you accordingly. The other uses a feature already common to GPS apps (though noticeably lacking in Google Maps... grrr...) which is speedometer displayed on the screen of your smartphone. If you suddenly decelerate near an exit, it pops up a window asking if you just exited the highway. A simple two button popup for Yes or No would suffice.

That is all.

21 Quest, Nov 06 2013

[link]






       Option 3: since you got off just 1 exit before you intended, and are now on a straight road paralleling the highway, you could continue straight forwards and look with your eyeballs until you see the road you're looking for.
DIYMatt, Nov 06 2013
  

       Right, but sometimes the next onramp isn't easily accessible from the sideroad, or there's a faster way to get to your destination than taking the suggested exit and a quick reroute would get you there faster than hunting down the originally suggested path. Other times, I've taken the correct exit and because it was onto a parallel road it thought I'd missed the exit and kept trying to reroute me to the next exit to turn around.
21 Quest, Nov 06 2013
  

       proper, dedicated GPS units like the one I rented last week seem to have got this right, I wandered onto numerous incorrect parallel roads while trying to avoid the I95 toll 'round NYC the other week and it caught all of them as far as I could tell.
bs0u0155, Nov 06 2013
  

       There's already an app (I can't recall the name of it at the moment) which uses your smartphone's camera to monitor the road ahead and alert drowsy drivers if they start to drift into another lane or if their speed changes by more than a few mph. I think it's called iOnRoad or something like that. Integrating it with a navigation app just makes sense in my estimation.
21 Quest, Nov 06 2013
  

       you could put QR codes or some other form of machine-readable data onto signs (possibly active IR?). Would be particularly useful for alerting navigation software about diversions etc.
bs0u0155, Nov 06 2013
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle