Navigation systems can help drivers get from their destinations quicker, and as more car owners become accustomed to using this tech, the demand for it increases. These systems are becoming more advanced, with significant updates such as automatic route planning, voice guidance, more detailed turn-by-turn directions, and more—optimizing any car owner’s overall driving experience.
Whether you’re using a built-in vehicle navigation system or a smartphone app, navigation technology has come a long way. It has been helping numerous organizations and individuals in different applications. For instance, thanks to navigation tech’s increasingly more accurate route and traffic tracking, delivery companies are able to forward parcels and packages from the United States down to Saudi Arabia and always track where everything is every step of the way.
With that said, here are the latest updates in navigation technology.
Automatic Route Planning
Planning routes is one of the first breakthroughs in navigation technology, and it should be the easiest thing navigation systems should be able to achieve. Typically, a navigation system offers alternative routes and waypoints, depending on your preference for the quickest, cheapest, and convenient route. The latest navigation technology updates have allowed drivers to avoid borders, toll roads, ferries, and highways, ensuring a smoother journey.
Additionally, navigation systems can guide you to the necessary lanes and automatically reroute your paths if you deviate from the initial course it suggests.
Voice Assistance
Most care manufacturers warn drivers not to use entry options while driving. However, pulling over every time you require to change your destination points can be time-consuming and impossible. That’s why the trend of adopting voice assistance technology is becoming more popular nowadays. Having navigation systems voice each turn you make might become tiresome in the long run, but it’s very useful. Besides voice assistance, most modern cars include turn-by-turn directions shown through visual data on the screen along with voice instructions—allowing you to focus on driving.
This update lets the navigation systems voice every direction of the turn, nearby street names, and the distance to your next turn. Additionally, it may also warn you about traffic congestions and toll roads ahead of your routes. Voice assistance in navigation technology comes in many forms. For example, Apple created the ‘CarPlay’ function that allows world-renowned AI voice assistant Siri to instruct you during your drives. Other voice assistants include Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Voice, and Amazon’s Alexa—which you can easily integrate all with your car’s APIs.
Experts in the industry aim to provide a more human-like experience with voice assistance in navigation systems. That’s why the voice assistance solution is being frequently updated and improved. For example, some corporations like Nuance Dragon Drive plan to incorporate next-gen technologies into built-in car navigation systems, including cloud-based services, better artificial intelligence (AI), big data, machine learning, voice biometrics, and natural language understanding.
All these possible additions increase the systems’ accuracy of understanding the driver’s request, rendering the information, and the voice assistant’s overall quality.
Offline Maps
Although smartphone navigation has been a game-changer in the sector, you can’t always rely on cell connections, especially when traveling to remote or rural areas. That’s why one of the latest updates in navigation technology includes providing offline maps. This upgrade can help drivers cruise along unknown routes with ease, ensuring that the street you’re turning down on still exists.
However, though offline maps can’t give POIs or live traffic reports, they can help you navigate the road by showing your car’s current position using its built-in GPS tracker.
Real-time Traffic Monitoring Through the FM Radio
Nowadays, advanced built-in guidance in modern vehicles can provide the same online maps and traffic data as what you’d get on your smartphone. However, thanks to technological advancements, smartphones can’t offer real-time traffic information in-vehicle navigation systems can provide without an internet connection. That’s because smartphones don’t have the capability of using the Traffic Message Channel (TMC) technology.
Updates in navigation systems have allowed it to gather encoded traffic and travel details and deliver them to FM radio broadcasts using the Radio Data System (RDS). It collects all the latest traffic information from several sources—ranging from police stations to traffic control centers. Thanks to this navigation technology update, drivers can still find the best routes even without an internet connection, potentially saving them from collisions, driving through dangerous roads, and construction alerts.
Although knowing when you arrive at your destination is excellent, finding the best routes to save you time and money is even better. Fast delivery, fleet tracking, and affordability are the key benefits, and with navigation technology ever-improving, expect to enjoy more advantages down the line—ensuring smoother and seamless drives.
