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A Car Navigation System That Takes Pictures
Brandon Miniman writes "Navman has brought to market the first in-car navigation system with a built in camera, the iCN 750. The camera lets you take pictures of places you've been. Geographical coordinates are then assigned to each picture, so that you can bring up a gallery, and choose your destination by clicking on a picture." Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
...and so that you can be tracked. Big Brother is watching you.
...except that the camera itself isn't impressive.
Somehow, I feel I need a 'real' digital camera that has the GPS and the map built-in instead.
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
We could use this to take pictures of women and associate the women with their locations - a kind of new-age black book! ...now, if only us /.ers could get women.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Why haven't more vendors of mapping technology done this sooner? This has long been a feature I've wanted... I don't know how long I've waited, from the first Microsoft and DeLorme mapping software and mapping software -- and having been fooled a couple of times into thinking one could associate pictures with map locations.
Until now, the closest I've found to doing something like this was Google maps -- and even that felt a little clunky in the interface (talking about Google Earth, the Windows application). And of course, with Google Map API many things are possible.
Congratulations to Navman for integrating in a clever and useful way pictures. (It'd be nice to be able to take your own pictures, and associate via some menu -- I'm wondering if they've provided that capability.) I'm in the market to replace a car GPS -- Navman has placed themselves high on the short list.
Any readers have feedback on the navigational ergonomics of Navman? (Very important, as I've become quite fond of TomTom's excellent ergonomics.)
...if I one day find pictures of an unfamiliar garage I will know that not only has KITT been reborn inside my car, but he is also cheating on me? :/
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
Hopefully they will make an adapter for my Ford Festiva. The cigarette lighter still works very well, and I don't smoke.
I suggest you read Slashdot
what about my rights to privacy? where i live we still have at least the illusion of privacy >:)
what about restricted areas (numbers sadly increasing again nowadays), where photos are not allowed?
what about my medication battling my paranoia?
Does it have a "Non Perspective" or classic GPS view?
It would be great for Geocaching to have a pic of your destination.
So, you get some great shots of the view as you plummet off the top of a cliff or into a river. Fab.
(May not make sense to non-UK residents)
Meta will eat itself
Idiot: First post was http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18988 2&cid=15627408
The next step is to have a built in system. You have the GPS data fed into the 4 images (from each side of the car), that is stored in ram for about 10 minutes while the car is moving. Then when the other car runs the red light, claims the light was green, then claims that you were speeding, you can then save that set of images to prove them wrong. Or, when you get pulled over when the cop says that you were speeding, but you have a record that says you were follong the speed limit.
Fight Spammers!
Seriously, could you imagine the insurance discount you'd get if they knew every incidient would be photographed?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
This would be really handy for rental cars, no need for them to give a map of hotels/sights/restraunts any longer.
Just scroll thru the pics and select the hotel, restraunt, tourist trap, etc... of your liking, then follow the arrows/automated voice.
Yah, but if it was YOU who swerved over in front of the minivan, you're going to want a way to destroy that evidence, quick!
What is this constant desire to add more fluff, more crap, more ways for things to go wrong, onto items? If I want a picture of something, I'll use a camera. That's what it's designed for. If I want to get back to a place, I'll use a map. That's what it's designed for.
Every new gadget that gets added to something is one more point of failure. You know why slr cameras of 20 and 30 years ago are still around and working? Because they were designed with one function: to take pictures. They didn't tell you the time, remind you of your appointment or give you directions.
If you can't find your way around using a map, having a GPS system in your car, now with new and flashy pictures!, isn't going to help.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you're wondering how I can be so anti-police, I recently got assaulted because some nutcase thought that I cut in line in front of him (I didn't - in fact I offered to let him go ahead of me). When the cops arrived, I explained what happened and the cop's reply was "Well, if you fuck somebody, you're gonna get fucked". American police are incredibly unprofessional, rude, racist, sexist, and of course there's the occasional beating too - the more cameras we have pointing at them (not us!) the better off we'll be.
You wouldn't happen to have had a car crash lately? Just thought I might ask. Not with a minivan or something?
In Soviet Russia, CAR watches you. In America... car watches you too. :-/
Guess we'll start seeing a lot more hippies hangin at the park now that they have to get out of the car to eliminate the evidence of them firing that fatty. But seriously, couple this with the auto-pilot feature that not a single auto manufacturer wants to be responsible and It may make it a reality while I'm still driving (40 years).
add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
You'll think that until it show's that it was you that strayed into the minivan's lane.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
These guys could definitely use such a navigation system: http://triptracker.net/trip/727/map/ They're traveling all across America in an old Volvo, using the TripTracker.net web service for geo-locating their photos. TripTracker can read GPS EXIF headers in JPEG photos so it would work perfectly with Navman.
Ziga
I can see it already.... Idiots are going to be seen with one of these things backing up and turning their car a little bit, moving forward a few feet again, etc. etc. - trying to make sure they've got exactly what they want in the camera's view to snap a "perfect" photo for the location they're at.
I agree with the other person who posted a complaint that too many devices are adding useless "fluff", trying too hard to be "unique" instead of incorporating truly useful featurea in their products. Sure, it may not be as "sexy" to sell durability or reliability, but frankly, I'd much rather pay for an appliance that'll last 5-10 more years, or a laptop computer that won't die the first time I accidently drop it on a concrete floor than for some gee-whiz, unneeded gadget merged into it.
With all the cameras being put in cellphones, you'd think practically everyone would be able to capture a photo of anyplace they happen to go already. Does a GPS system need to do it too??
Could this finally be the gadget through which I find True Happiness?
All of the others have been disappointments in that regard...
...It's not that the camera won't have enough pixels. It's not that you need an Ansel Adams-quality photograph.
It's that to get a nice, clear, useful, _recognizable_ thumbnail-sized picture of your destination requires a lot of intelligent thought, good framing of the picture, thirty seconds to walk around and pick a good angle, and a time of day when the light is reasonable.
Three-quarters of the pictures people take with this thing will be
a) unrecognizable due to reflections on the car window they're trying to shoot through, or
b) unrecognizable because of lighting issues (dark, muddy, illegible storefront against a nice bright sky), or
c) unrecognizable because the camera was pointed at the wrong thing, or
d) unrecognizable because a lot of buildings look pretty much like each other, or
e) unrecognizable because the store name is too small to read in the finished picture when displayed thumbnail size on the navigation screen, or
f) unrecognizable because important recognition features were hidden behind a parked car, or
g) unrecognizable because you don't have a view of the front of the building from the only place where you could stop the car, which happens to be the parking lot in back of the building, or
h) unrecognizable because it's night-time and the camera isn't sensitive enough to make a good picture by streetlight (and the streetlighting isn't even enough even if it were, and the flash isn't bright enough to light up a building thirty feet away, and even if it were all you'd get are the flash reflections off the windows...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Until everyone got it.. then imagine the penalties for not having it.
Yes, yes, and again, yes.
It turns out that taking quality pictures - and I don't even mean "hang them in an art gallery" quality, just "easily recognizable and/or pleasant to look at" - is a non-trivial task. Trying to do it with an inferior device (mostly due to crappy lenses) only makes the job harder. Trying to do it quickly or, worse, while moving is yet another difficulty.
Add to all the technical difficulties you've already covered the fact that most people only have the vaguest notion how to effectively frame a shot, and this gadget only gets more useless.
(Note that when I say "useless," I don't mean "incapable of being used," I mean "making it easy for the user to perform uselessly")
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Coming soon: the high end model, which can take pictures of places you _haven't_ been!
America's Funniest Fender Benders.
Good point. I'm going to buy insurance company stock immediately in order to benefit no matter who realizes the savings from this.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
"Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better."
You could also add the always-on even when the car is parked and not running video camera to document those assholes who keep slamming my brand car with their friggin doors...I've had to have paintless dent repair twice now..
Does anybody know if 'geographic cooordinates' includes other data besides lat, long, and altitude (the GPS numbers)? I've been wanting for quite a while now to have the azimuth included on something like this. All the GPS devices I've used have been able to determine this [insert method here] and there's an EXIF field for it, IIRC.
The point being, for any set of GPS coordinates you can have 360 degrees of different pictures of a point on Earth (ignoring pitch and roll).
But... if you have the azimuth data you can start uploading everybody's pictures via an online cellphone network to some Google Database (they have the disk space) and using QuickTime VR-style image processing to have before too long a fully immersive view of anyplace on earth from anywhere on earth. I'd love to preview my drive through some intersections in Boston before I go down there, on an ad-hoc basis. As the world changes, the cars' cameras keep uploading and the server uses the best recent photos to achieve a current blend (after a while you can look at historical versions of places). Worst case your less traveled roads give you an out-of-season perspective, but solving that problem is simply a matter of bandwidth.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It'll be perfect for my Memento-like life style.
/me looks at picture with caption "A drive thru you visited on 06.27.2006. Don't trust the person behind the counter".
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
In Soviet Russia these Soviet Russia jokes aren't considered the least bit amusing...
A blackbox like those in planes would be a lot better, cheaper, more accurate, reliable, standardizable, and would raise less privacy concerns than installing a bunch of cameras for visually recording all driver's actions and the surrounding traffic. A blackbox would just have to record the last, say, 10 minutes before an accident, parameters like the value of the speed indicator, actual speed of the individual tires, motor RPM, G-forces, steering angle, state of the electric system (blinkers, headlights, fog light,...) etc. pp.. Modern cars have so much electronics in them already: your basic Antilock Braking System, Electronic Stability Program, and whatnot.
There are so many data already available, but they're just discarded (after being processed by the various systems) or can be easily wiped by an accident. Instead they should be written on some cheap and durable storage medium. Even at 100 recorded parameters, 1 MB (times three drives for redundancy) should be more than sufficient for 10 minutes worth of recording at 2 or 3 data points per second. The drives themselves can be encased in a light, small, near-indestructible box (carbon fibers, special plastics, or just plain steel) which would then provide objective, highly valuable evidence (for a technical expert) in case of an accident.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
GPS input takes out the need for gauges. It can argued that the speedometer is not calibrated, but the police will always testify that their speedometer/radar gun has been calibrated. A GPS can be accurate within .75 mph with no calibration.
I got stopped for doing 76 in a 75 zone in El Paso.
Cop: You were going 76 mph.
Me: No, my GPS said I was going 75.
Cop: My radar gun is calibrated.
Me: My GPS uses government satelite signals.
Cop: The speed limit will be reduced to 65 at sunset.
Me: I know, my car will tell me when.
Cop: Be careful.
Me: Thank you.
Results: No ticket.
Fight Spammers!
That's an old troll, and poorly done to boot. Negative troll karma for you.
Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
;-)
My brother wanted something like that after getting hit 4 times in a one month period, though he was luckily not to blame for any of the accidents and neither he nor his car sustained serious damage and everyone who hit him could walk away as well. His implementation, however, was a bit different.
Figuring his huge mid-90's reflective gold-colored Lincoln (like I said, 4 hits in one month, little damage) was somehow difficult for motorists to see (we always figured it had lawyer-installed magnets in it), he planned to replace it with a safety vest-orange Hummer with a boat horn, construction truck/tow truck flashing lights, a rifle rack in the back with an old drill rifle (just for fun), and a video system similar to this one.
As we had this conversation, we drove past a wrecker - possibly the closest vehicle in appearance to the one we had devised - that had been rear-ended by some idiot who was likely on his cell phone and didn't appear to have moved it from his ear since the accident.
No vehicle is safe these days from those with a room temperature IQ and a cell phone... at least with a Lincoln, you can be sure that whoever hits you will be off the road for quite a while while their car sits in the shop...
Every once in a while I look up the current state of the art and try to figure out how to cost-effectively put a "black box" into my car, not just grabbing video, but hooking into the car's computer to grab things like speed and other details. I'm not sure how useful it would be in court, but the video at least would make some entertaining watching. Submitting a few clips of some of the asshole law-breaking drivers I come across every day to the local law enforcement might feel good too.
you mean this one?
http://www.eyesee360.com/videowarp/
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Anyone intereted in the geomatics of car navigation will probably find (shameless plug) slashgeo.org very useful. There's a Transportation topic. Using this story (slashdot's dupe ;-), will get more links regarding geocoding photos. And you can read this interesting story about Navigating using photos.
/. readers are sometimes lazy.. (I am! ;-) here's a part of the article (from last March! slashdot's late ;-): "Navman's latest wheeze is this GPS in-car Sat Nav device that will take you to your destination using only the power of photos. Snap a photo of - say - your mum's house on your next visit using the in-built camera, and the unit will record the co-ordinates."
But I know
Animoog.org
In Soviet Russia...
car photographs YOU!
... but I don't think I need pictures of the backs of ^%$#ing SUVs, since that's all I get to see when I'm driving anyway.
I absolutely hate this fad of putting cameras on everything.
It increases battery consumption, price, size and weight of any item they're added to. Also if you happen to work in a secure area, you can't take it to work.
Its almost impossible to find a nice cell phone without a camera now.
There's a PC/Win prog called "Fugawi Global Navigator" that can associate images and/or sounds with waypoints or GPS fixes. I know it interfaces with PDA/Smartphones too, so it may use them as a camera for input instead of just using a regular pre-existing image or sound file.
:)
Some cool features; it can use nearly any map source, standard USGS maps, NOAA marine charts, GeoTIFF's and aerial/satellite imagery. It has 3-D elevation views and GPS driving assist.
No, I don't work for them
I'm not as sure, but I think the latest offerings from DeLorme may finally have the photo association feature too.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
Feh. Insurance companies don't consider things like "evidence." Example: my friend was sideswiped by an SUV who tried to drive around his car on the left side (in the shoulder) on an offramp. He tore a huge gash down the side of my friend's car. Later, the driver claimed that it was my friend who was trying to drive around HIM, and that HE was the one who was sideswiped on the left.
Nevermind the fact that if that were the case, the damage to his vehicle would have been on the OTHER SIDE. The insurance company happily disregarded this unassailable evidence and found my friend to be at fault for the accident.
... it's the camera. GPS turn-by-turn navigation sounds excellent and I'll probably buy it someday. But a camera? Why the hell would I want to look at a bunch of pictures to try to figure out which of these vaguely similar looking stores is really that True Value in Chesapeake, VA, that I used to use and need to get back to? I just want to look up the NAME of the place.
I get that different people have different needs, but I have a hard time believing that anyone will find this useful enough to actually pay for.
Sean
You don't have to refold the GPS if you drive off the page.
You've never missed four turns while in a twisty maze of one-way streets before because it takes your GPS too long to figure out a new path after you missed the last one until it's too late to make the turn.
Yeah, I've nearly folded my GPS before when I was finished with it. "Nearly folded" it right off the dashboard, the stupid piece of junk...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Excerpt: From Getting There: The science of driving directions, by Nick Paumgarten in an April '06 issue of The New Yorker. Fascinating and insightful article about the history of road maps, with special focus on today's crop of online maps and DVD/Nav systems in cars. Plus, the article is just really well-written. I've read it and reread it
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Buyers of this item should also consider purchasing the Kenwood TT756SL 2 slice toaster and radio. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AANXG8/ref=no sim/002-8287001-2609612?n=284507
I suppose an integrated camera could be useful in some situations.. Adding the GPS coordinates into the picture data would be cool. But, I think I would rather have GPS integrated into my current camera than pictures in my navigation system.
Some more useful integrations would be:
- Digital terrestrial radio: The conversion process is just starting, and almost noone has a digital radio. Adding it into the GPS should be easy, and with the storage capacity in the GPS you could record or timeshift radio.
- Satellite Radio: I don't want too many devices mounted in my car.. why not add a Sirius or XM receiver to the single unit.
- Wifi access. With all the hotspots available, access should be plentiful.. Updates of software, traffic, and maps could be done. It could also give basic www access, at about the level of a PDA.
- Address book, notes, calendar: Much data is useful in the car.
My Garmin Nuvi has MP3 and Picture capabilities, as well as several travel apps. I probably won't upgrade until I can get some of the above features..
I'm a big boy. I don't mind paying for my mistakes. A system that records my car would keep everyone honest. As long as it is MY recording. I don't want the recording in 'my' car to belong to someone else. Let them make their own recordings. I considered setting up a DVR in my car the last time I got pulled over. The CHP instructed me to park in a spot that was not visible from the road, wrote me a ticket for doing 82mph when I was only going 65mph, and the entire time kept trying to push buttons with sarcastic remarks and accusations. I'm pretty sure that they were looking for a reason to beat a man that night. It was pretty scary.
Once upon-a-time people put clocks in everything. Nothing that *needed* a clock in it, but we put them in anyway. Now we put cameras in things, whether they need it or not. Big big deal. We'll grow out of it.
Add to all the technical difficulties you've already covered the fact that most people only have the vaguest notion how to effectively frame a shot, and this gadget only gets more useless.
So does that mean the pictures this device will take will be about on par with those the average person would take?
I've been doing this with my camera and a handheld GPS for ages. My GPS stores a track log, I sync the times with the GPS and the camera and use the EXIF time stamps to figure out where I was when the photo was taken. Then i've got a little script which puts links onto google maps.
I've seen countless scripts to do this sort of thing from other people. What I can tell this system is just doing the same and making a fairly obvious step.
What I would however like to see is a high end digital camera with a GPS that just encodes your position into the EXIF header.
I expect they'll be on par with the pictures the average person will take using a cell phone from a moving car under questionable lighting conditions.
Which is, honestly, good enough for the sort of "I was there" pictures that fill the pages of your average family's vacation album. But, I suspect, not good enough to serve the purpose they're supposed to in this context, which involves quick place recognition.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
This would be great for buses. Instead of having traffic cops giving people tickets for driving/parking in bus lanes the bus driver could just snap pictures of the offending vehicles. When the driver got back to the base the photos could be uploaded and instant fines sent off to the offenders.
[Please type your sig here.]
Cop (on radio): Request backup, I have a perp resisting arrest.
Cop (to you): Step out of the car, please. *WHACK*
Moral: Don't be a smartass to a cop with something to prove (you know he has something to prove if he pulled you over for what he thought was 1MPH over the limit).
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE