I give really good directions. I tell people, you will see a park on your left side of the corner with a giant evergreen tree and the fire house on the other, after you pass the Von’s supermarket and tire place. Apple filed a patent to make directions less mecha
nical and more human. The patent is for “humanized navigation instructions” to be more like the way a person would directions.
An Apple example is “Your destination is in the apartment complex with the fountain in front.” It’s hard to see house numbers when driving but visuals such as name brand store are more recognizable.
“In addition to being overly mechanical, conventional navigation instructions do not account for the mental state of a user and can often confuse and frustrate the user who may be lost in an unfamiliar location.”
The new human style directions focus being easy-to-understand rather than precision, and attempts to make the navigation session less stressful for the user by using landmarks.
Some contend is that these kinds of directions demand more than just maps but photographic understanding of surroundings and could be the reason for seeing Apple-SUVs with cameras on the roofs.
The patent was applied for on October 23, 2013 and issued April 23, 2015. See Patent.
Meanwhile other newly issued patents include Google’s self-driving car dealing with cows, Hyundai’s cell phone killer patents and rain recycling for coolant patent. EDGE3 Technologies and Honda R&D patented their in-vehicle human machine interface (HMI) system that combines voice and gesture recognition. A Motorola patent will identify road hazards, take photos of them and them then send the problems to drivers en route behind the car using the technology.
It is not clear when this kind of navigation will be deployed in CarPlay because it is delayed.