GPS World, December 2009

THE BUSINESS REPORT FROM TELEMATICS MUNICH GPS Takes the Wheel By Moni Malek T elematics is an unstoppable trend in cars and a conference in BMWs hometown of Munich with Mercedes Audi and Volkswagen headquarters not far away provided a humming platform All these companies spoke in sessions of the Telematics Munich Telematics Update which drew a record crowd of 370 attendees for a two day program and 17 exhibit stands buzzing with activity Whether its Europes emergency call initiative eCall fleet management stolen vehicle recovery pay as youdrive road charging congestion charging or remote diagnostics no one in telematics really talks about GPS it is there and it works I believe all great technologies do that you just use them without knowing that you do This particular great technology enables new telematics services leading to the so called connected vehicle and location based services LBS producing the connected driver The opening Gartner presentation stated that by 2012 all premium brands will offer connected vehicles using what great technology again In 2007 the same firm claimed there would be a free vehicle navigation model by 2009 Good timing as Google announced a free navigation application just the week prior if you allow for a 40 60 per month data plan and an Android phone In the next panel Google itself said Android in cars is not its priority Later Continental announced that the basis of its car platform was Android although another group who spoke Genivi Alliance www genivi org is Linux based and rapidly gaining members Daimler showed future work on the human machine interface HMI including navigation communication entertainment drivers It was nice to see a demonstration live from Palo Alto California the wonders of high speed data communication These all seem to bet on 10 50 megabits second DEFENSE wireless data communication for the moving car The general view on this is that it will await Long Term Evolution LTE the followon to the current 3G networks T Mobile indicated that LTE can achieve this data rate but it will be a few years before the general public can get it MONI MALEK An interesting workshop described the use of 80211 a wireless standard This may be too simple but call it an upgraded 80211 a b g better known as Wi Fi for car tocar C2C communications One potential application is crash avoidance Wi Fi has problems at relative car speeds over 100 kilometers hour 62 miles hour and its range is limited to a few hundred meters 80211p extends this to several hundred meters and works at higher car speeds Two cars moving toward each other at 100 km hr have a relative speed of 200 km hr GPS plays a role here as each 80211p receiver also has GPS This helps optimize communication to the other cars because knowing the exact relative distance is also valuable for optimizing communication protocols and the signal power used for radio transmission Plenty more followed on the second day but Ive used up my space here See the editors Wide Awake blog at www gpsworld com wideawake for my complete account in a guest starring role Note this conference report does not necessarily express the opinions of the author Moni Malek is a director of eRide Europe MORE ONLINE In depth Coverage Find more details on these stories at gpsworld com For the latest GPS news sign up for GPS World Alerts and how this was made easy and intuitive for Navteq Awarded Contract with National Geospatial Intelligence Agency The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency NGA has awarded mapmaker Navteq Chicago Illinois a contract as the map data and content provider for the comprehensive global commodity dataset SATNAV that offers transportation public venues and miscellaneous pointsof interest data layers NGA provides responsive Geospatial Intelligence GEOINT products support services and information to the U S Defense Department components and for national intelligence purposes Navteq map data and content will provide NGA with geocoding and map display capabilities for GEOINT products as well as contribute toward national security objectives Navteq map data includes geospatial information such as roads cities political boundaries physical features railroads census boundaries parks schools fire departments police departments hospitals and many other geospatial vector data layers www gpsworld com December 2009 GPS World 27