Current location:
In the future, most cars will come equipped with factory fitted music players cum GPS devices which would help the drivers get a better idea of the road conditions on their planned route
The Portable Navigation Device has seen an impressive growth over the past few years. Technological advances are happening at a much quicker pace than earlier and with major brand names from across the world making a beeline for a share of our growing market, the future looks bright for PNDs in India. They offer many features like turn-by-turn voice commands, location of hospitals, restaurants, cinemas, petrol pumps, road speed limits, eco-routing, eco-driving and better accuracy of your location on the road as well. This is apart from the fact that the devices can also double up as video and audio players, AV view for a reversing camera, FM modulator, Bluetooth connectivity with phone as well. So PNDs are clearly here to stay.
As if all this was not enough, now there is talk of live traffic updates which will be displayed on PNDs. Right now, live traffic is limited to Delhi and Mumbai but soon it will be available in other cities too. The whole idea of getting live updates instantaneously on PND seems very exciting and mysterious. So, we spoke with Hitesh Desai, product manager, Navteq Traffic Pro and Rohan Verma, director, MapmyIndia about real traffic updates and also the future of personal navigation devices in our country. However, first let us understand just how the information is collected.
There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes for bringing live traffic information to the customers. Firstly data is collected from various government and non-government sources and even past records for various road segments help make a ‘speed profile’. This ‘speed profile’ helps to determine basic information about time periods when the congestion is generally high. Also, it helps plot days that are busier than normal as well as months that are expected to witness excessive traffic due to festivals, weddings or a holiday season.
Then there are tracking devices installed in fleet cars and trucks and other PND devices which relay back information about the condition of traffic congestion on roads. All this information is collected, analysed and then sent to all the other PNDs in a matter of a few minutes.
Data can be received over many channels and depending upon the manufacturer, it can be transmitted through mobile, FM radio and HD Radio among others. In India, mobile data is expected to be the primary channel to provide live traffic information. For Navteq based maps, Desai says the GPS manufacturer can modify its primary data according to the requirements of the device. In the images displayed here red, yellow and green represent traffic conditions where red represents heavy congestion, yellow is mild congestion and green means there's no congestion whatsoever.
Verma adds that in MapmyIndia devices, when looking at an overview of a city, the application shows traffic incidents all over the city. The user can get detailed reports on traffic congestion with the name of the road, the time delay as well as the distance of the traffic jam. With a route planned, only traffic incidents along that route are shown thus helping the user to avoid the bad segments of the route.
