Driving Force
Mapping the Future of In-car Navigation

Joe sales rep steps off the plane at LA Ex, briefcase in hand. He finally finds his car in the sea of rentals and hops in. Rummaging through his briefcase, he comes up with a list of addresses for the sales calls he has to make and some vague directions. But now what? Los Angeles, his new sales territory, is a mystery to him. Might as well be Mars. Well, maybe there'll be a map in the glove box.

No such luck. But hey, what's this? "CRISTINE," reads the screen attached to the dashboard. "Enter destination," the screen beckons. Must be one of those new GPS gadgets Joe's read about in Popular Mechanics.

Should he trust this thing? No choice... first meeting starts in less than 25 minutes. Tentatively, Joe enters the address of his client on the keypad. Mere seconds after putting his key in the ignition, a simple map of his current location pops up on-screen, and an authoritative voice says, "At the rental gate, turn left onto Alameda Avenue." Joe does as he's told. "Make a right turn at the next set of lights. You'll now be heading west on Plum Road for a mile and a quarter."

CRISTINE is ideal for a wide range of commercial vehicles that require mission-critical response.

Intelligent approach to the road

While CRISTINE* may seem like it was developed for the Batmobile or James Bond's roadster, it's actually coming soon to a car near you - perhaps even one in your own driveway.

An advanced yet simple-to-use in-car navigation system developed by France-based BCI, CRISTINE offers an intelligent approach to the road. Using BCI's own positioning system (based on GPS, dead reckoning, and map matching) and geographical information stored on CD-ROM, the system computes the best route between two points in less than five seconds. A synthetic voice and data screen explains landmark and destination locations, routes, and other information to both driver and passengers. And, the system takes into account any detours a driver may take, instantly recomputing the route.

Powered by an Intel 486 processor running QNX 4 and Photon, CRISTINE also includes 16M of flash, 32M of RAM, an LCD screen, a GPS system, a CD-ROM drive, and a SoundBlaster card. An infrared keyboard and mouse are optional.

Mission-critical applications

Because people don't like getting lost, particularly in an unfamiliar city, CRISTINE has a future in private vehicles like family and rental cars. But CRISTINE goes far beyond your average in-car navigation system.

Unlike conventional in-car systems that only provide navigation services, CRISTINE is highly integrated. This system is the only one of its kind that's able to integrate data from other sources like multimedia systems and telecommunications systems such as GSM. Drivers can have immediate access to traffic and weather data, emergency services, and so on that CRISTINE uses to automatically recompute routes to bypass accident sites, traffic jams, or dangerous road conditions.

This integration, along with the application's fast response time and fault tolerance, sets CRISTINE apart from other car navigation systems and makes it ideal for a wide range of commercial vehicles that require mission-critical response times - emergency and police vehicles, courier and delivery trucks, taxis, and company vehicle fleets. For example, ambulance drivers can use CRISTINE to avoid traffic snarls and accidents - saving precious seconds and, possibly, lives. Fleet courier services can avoid costly delays.

Connecting CRISTINE to a central server means companies can send destination data from a central dispatch unit to a commercial vehicle en route. CRISTINE instantly informs a driver of the new destination and automatically adjusts the vehicle's route. This feature also allows companies to pinpoint their vehicles precisely on the server's display screen, which means taxi and other multi-vehicle businesses like armored car and courier companies can now efficiently manage their fleets in real time from one central location. CRISTINE also integrates email, cellular phone support, and allows users to download information - essentially creating a mobile office.

The lay of the land

Two of the key aspects of a reliable navigation system are, of course, accurate maps and an efficient information-retrieval mechanism. BCI has both. Working with firms like Navtech and Teleatlas, BCI takes the most up-to-date cartography data and, using object-oriented programming techniques, is able to compress the data from gigabytes to megabytes. For example, BCI is able to store ten countries-worth of cartography data on one CD-ROM. However, the company's main strength lies in their mastery of database management. BCI has developed their own database compiler and a proprietary database format that achieves exceptional calculation times, which rely on the structure of the database and its transfer characteristics rather than the power of the computer per se.

In the driver's seat

CRISTINE is designed to keep a driver's attention on the road, so the display screen shows just simple messages and directions while a synthesized voice clearly and accurately guides a driver through the route. In addition, rather than simply providing a series of pre-recorded messages, CRISTINE uses advanced text-to-speech software to read out text in any one of eight languages. And, to make the system even more user-friendly and to avoid any possibility of distraction, CRISTINE will run entirely by voice recognition in the near future.

Once stopped in a safe location, a driver (or passenger) can access a zoom function on the display to change scale, either to obtain further map detail or to display a general view of the route. For example, a driver or passenger may choose a vectorial map. Always centered on the vehicle, this map gives details of environmental information (bodies of water, forests, railways, hospitals, one-way systems). Another choice is a conventional map that shows the level of detail of a traditional roadmap.

With CRISTINE, a driver always remains free to choose a different route than the one suggested. It doesn't matter whether a driver has deliberately chosen to override the suggested route or simply misses a turn, the system will recalculate a new itinerary based on the new location of the vehicle - in less than three seconds.

Because CRISTINE has to perform many functions simultaneously - taking inputs from multiple sources, performing involved computations, and sending the results to a driver and passengers, or possibly, a central server - it was clear BCI needed anOS that could handle multitasking. Moreover, realtime performance was a necessity because the system has to be able to compute an itinerary in less than five seconds and recalculate a route based on outside data within three.

A driver or passenger can display a vectorial map, which is always centered on the vehicle. The map shows where the vehicle is in relation to roadways, hospitals, bodies of water, and so on.