Super Maps for the 21st Century

Roland Piquepaille writes "After five years of trials, Craig Knoblock and his team at the Information Sciences Institute of the University (ISI) of Southern California, have developed Heracles Maps, an easy-to-use laptop package to optimize routes in the whole world for both military and business travelers. This news release, "A SuperMap for Soldiers -- Or Business Travelers," says that the application integrates various sources of geospatial information, such as satellite imagery of mapping data. From this data, soldiers can easily find a safe route between two locations without being seen or shot from an enemy in another location. this package can easily be adapted to civilian applications, such as a powerful travel planner. You'll find more details and references in this overview."

Comments

Um...great?

[James A. S. Joyce]

Isn't finding a path from one location to another, taking into account terrain, changes in weather, means of locomotion and ease of travel a fairly difficult AI problem? I find it difficult to believe that a handy "Super Map" will solve the problem."

Re:Um...great?

[BarryNorton]

Yes, that's why the soldiers natural intelligence is used for this task - as it has been since the day of the Ancients - this is a tool that integrates information useful to the choice.

Re:Um...great?

[HangingChad]

There's a flip side to this. If one side uses software to determine a transit route, the other side can use the same software to guess where enemy combatants might try to transit. Position dusters, quad 50's and claymores as appropriate and remember that the side marked FRONT TOWARD ENEMY points away from you.

I would avoid any path a computer marked out for me the same reason it's a good idea to avoid trails.

Uhh, what if both sides have the product?

[jdawg]

I mean, will the software generate the same suggested route given the same input conditions?

"Ok. We know they're here. And we know that they think we're here. So...their software is going to tell them to take this route..."

Re:Uhh, what if both sides have the product?

[sql*kitten]

"Ok. We know they're here. And we know that they think we're here. So...their software is going to tell them to take this route..."

Consider GPS - for a long time, the US military alone could use the system to its full precision, third parties received less precise locations. Not less accurate, true, but still not as good as the military. That's what could happen here - any "export version" of the software would be more predictable than the version that the US military itself uses. 'Course, they'd have to be careful that they didn't provide the tech now to a friend who becomes an enemy later...

Automatic enemy avoidance?

[MrRTFM]

I dont think so.
If I were a soldier I wouldn't trust a route from a laptop. Not unless I knew exactly when it was told where enemy 'C' was located so I could allow for movements.

And of course, there is the whole beta testing problem - imagine a squad of troops walking through an 'empty forest' which just happens to contain a platoon of troops (Enemy 'D') doing an exercise not picked up by the spy satellites.

I'm not saying this is bad- I think its great, but no soldier will ever blindly follow the route it plots.

Topographical improvements...

[dotslashconfig]

From what I gather, there are governmental organizations in most countries that are responsible for maintaining roads and highways. If you were able to get various countries to release information about actual speed limits/lengths of these roads, you could calculate efficient ways to circumvent troublesome regions.

In addition, with the implementation of GPS/laser terrain detection, you could implement the commercial air travel aspect of such a 'Super Map'. After all, we have laser and GPS guided tomahawk cruise missiles. Wouldn't the terrain detection be almost the same. And in that vein, wouldn't it be an easy leap to apply that functionality to a wide range of vehicles?

I think it's true, more now than ever, that a lot of technologies we're seeing become available to commercial applications were developed with military uses in mind.

If nothing else, it's good to see defense spending can have a nice turn around, and that developing bonds between same-purpose organizations accross the world is finally taking a step in the right direction.

Great free map downloader

[fuctape]

I've always enjoyed using JDM Cox's 'USAPhotoMaps' for free: USAPhotomaps -- it downloads terraserver images, allows zooming, panning, path overlay, and spot marking, among other features. Good stuff.

But is it worth it?

[theLOUDroom]

"A computer with a bullet in it is just a paperweight. A map with a bullet in it is still a map."
-Maj. Keith Hauk

Re:But is it worth it?

[theLOUDroom]

If you have a few small PDA-size computers which all have the software, redundancy can save you from this problem.

Great! So instead of carrying around one small, light, flexible map the soldier gets to carry around THREE brick sized PDAs.
That's not a solution in my book.

I suggest PocketPCs (or similar) with biometric identification

I would REALLY strongly suggest against that. Think about it: I shoot a soldier from behind, run up, grab his PDA, and use his fingerprint to log right in.

Biometrics are so frickin overrated it's sick. If you're gonna do something like that, use a PASSWORD so it dies when the user dies.

which are self-scrambling (or -destroying) if left unattended for a sufficiently long time.

Also a bad idea. A soldier has better things to think about than whether his PDA is going to self-destruct because he hasn't logging in recently enough.
A much better way would be to make it automatically log out after a short period of inactivity. (When logged out, all files would be in an encrypted format.)
No need to strand some poor soldier without a map because he forgot his PDA when he was taking a leak a mile back.

I'm not totally against the idea of electronic maps for soldiers, but I think one needs to consider the real-world implications of such a thing.

Roads != Open Country

[billstewart]

Searching for routes in a collection of roads is a discrete graph optimization problem that people have put lots of work into. Searching for routes across arbitrary terrain is much more complex, and the math's different.

For instance, if a road is zigzagging up a hill, and you're in a car or tank, the road is probably your best route. If you're on foot going uphill, it might still be your best route, or it might not. If you're on foot, cutting off the curves and going straight down might be a better route, depending on how steep it is, and if you're in a tank, it might also be a good route if it's not too steep and doesn't have too many trees in the way.

If you're on foot, do you walk through a swamp or take the longer road around it? ("Waist deep in the big muddy.mp3")

Looks Handy

[Dark Bard]

"It can instantly dissect the geography of a city, showing users the electrical power grid, all rail, roads, pathways, and and other man-made features, plus much more both in map and photographic form." Does it come in Arabic?