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The third idea for my 365 social ideas is location-based as well as crowd-sourced/user contribution-based. The idea is to create an audio-only GPS navigation software. Most modern mobile phones and PDA’s contain a GPS tracker and many of them contain built-in GPS navigation software or have it available over data traffic (e.g. Google Maps). However, all of these require for the most part, that you look on the screen to fully understand where to go. Most use basic audio commands like “Turn left in 200 meters”, but such commands are very imprecise and frankly quite useless when navigating in cities with many and narrow streets.

My idea is to create a crowd-sourced website for creating audio-only navigational aids. This will increase traffic safety, as car drivers don’t have to look at the screen for anything but entering the destination, but will also extend GPS navigation to other people – like motorcyclists, bikers, joggers etc.

An example of a good audio-only navigational aid could be “Turn right just after the church on the right-hand side in 100 meters”, or “Take the third exit in the round-about towards Chicago with 20 miles to go”. It should be clues that actually represent what the driver can see. In the example with the church, there should actually be a visible church easily recognizable – and on the other hand, if there is one such, that should be the basis of the navigational clues around it. In the example with the round-about, the third exit should actually contain a sign (and the only such sign) saying “Chicago: 20 miles”.

The main challenge here is to map visible items with the map. Some visible items change, but most are static. Some require local knowledge (e.g. “turn right at the Farnham-building”) and should be avoided, but most can be described in knowledge-neutral ways.

Creating such a service crowd-sourced will probably be the best way to go, as users can enter, change and/or comment on descriptions of landmarks along the roads they travel.

The second part of the challenge is to create a technology for converting simple road instructions to visual-based instructions. Some of these visual aids could be deduced from regular map contents, but most have to be supplied by users.

Why?

GPS navigation for cars is a huge success – and a huge business. But most other travelers do not have the option of using GPS navigation, as most are useless without a screen – and some travelers cannot look at screens during their travel. A service for describing landmarks and a technology for converting this information into usable spoken descriptions would be a huge leap forward.

What’s next?

Do with this idea whatever you like – expand, implement, trash or forget. Just remember, that if you use it in anyway make sure to attribute me according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, that all these 365 Social Ideas are published under.

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