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Now, you can navigate Delhi roads by satellite: The Hindu
Bangalore, Sept 07: In what is possibly the first satellite-based car navigation tool for an Indian city, a Belgian company - Tele Atlas - has produced a navigation Compact Disk for Delhi.
Bangalore, Sept 07: In what is possibly the first satellite-based car navigation tool for an Indian city, a Belgian company — Tele Atlas — has produced a navigation Compact Disk for Delhi.
The CD maps 2,200 sq. km. of the capital including over 11,000 km. of roads. It can be used with any standard satellite-based car navigation system that harnesses the 24-satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) to fix the vehicles precise position on earth at any given time. The company, a leader in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS), says it deployed 23 survey vehicles with 400 volunteers earlier this year and completed the data capture working round the clock for 48 hours.
The CD includes location details for 8,000 points of interest, 2,326 government offices, 1,904 places of worship, 1,352 restaurants, 623 hospitals, 410 petrol stations, 108 shopping centres, 106 embassies, 94 parking places, 43 cinema theatres as well as 39 railway stations, 14 stadia and 2 airports. It also claims to integrate three-fourth of Delhi's house numbers; though curiously it logs only 4 hotels. The results were processed at Tele Atlas facilities in Ghent, Belgium and Harsum, Germany by June and field-tested since then on Delhi roads using a popular car navigator system, the Blaupunkt Travel Pilot DX.Product details have been posted at the company's website: www.teleatlas.com. While quite a few companies in India are working on digitised maps of Indian cities, these are currently available in the country mainly as printed atlases or CDs that can be played on a PC. he Eicher group pioneered such products with its Delhi city map and since then Eicher Goodearth, the holding company has released maps of Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. (www.eichermaps.com) .
The Bangalore-based Spatial Data Pvt. Ltd., was the first out with CD-based city maps and since 1999 it has brought out route finders for Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune in its CD-based "MapCue" series.It has also created countrywide CD-based map resources for corporate customers.
. The GPS receiver field also has its Indian players — Bharat Electronics, Aerospace Systems Pvt. Ltd., Accord Software and Systems and BOW Network, all Bangalore-based, as well as Fugro Geonics Pvt. Ltd., in Mumbai are some leading names.
Car navigator models such as Blaupunkt, Kenwood, Clarion, Philips `CARiN' or Seimens typically cost the equivalent of Rs. 20,000 - Rs 30,000 in dollars and this in itself may not be a barrier for those Indians who increasingly go for premium cars costing Rs. 15 lakhs and more.
However, the car navigation market in India was hitherto very small — partly due to a "Catch 22" situation: Because there was no navigation software for Indian cities, few owners found it worth while to install a navigator and with the navigator population so small, no one came forward to create the India-specific software.
That may change — with the entry of Tele Atlas — and motivate the GIS industry, here and abroad, to put more of India on the "satnav" map.
Bureau Report
The CD includes location details for 8,000 points of interest, 2,326 government offices, 1,904 places of worship, 1,352 restaurants, 623 hospitals, 410 petrol stations, 108 shopping centres, 106 embassies, 94 parking places, 43 cinema theatres as well as 39 railway stations, 14 stadia and 2 airports. It also claims to integrate three-fourth of Delhi's house numbers; though curiously it logs only 4 hotels. The results were processed at Tele Atlas facilities in Ghent, Belgium and Harsum, Germany by June and field-tested since then on Delhi roads using a popular car navigator system, the Blaupunkt Travel Pilot DX.Product details have been posted at the company's website: www.teleatlas.com. While quite a few companies in India are working on digitised maps of Indian cities, these are currently available in the country mainly as printed atlases or CDs that can be played on a PC. he Eicher group pioneered such products with its Delhi city map and since then Eicher Goodearth, the holding company has released maps of Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. (www.eichermaps.com) .
The Bangalore-based Spatial Data Pvt. Ltd., was the first out with CD-based city maps and since 1999 it has brought out route finders for Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune in its CD-based "MapCue" series.It has also created countrywide CD-based map resources for corporate customers.
. The GPS receiver field also has its Indian players — Bharat Electronics, Aerospace Systems Pvt. Ltd., Accord Software and Systems and BOW Network, all Bangalore-based, as well as Fugro Geonics Pvt. Ltd., in Mumbai are some leading names.
Car navigator models such as Blaupunkt, Kenwood, Clarion, Philips `CARiN' or Seimens typically cost the equivalent of Rs. 20,000 - Rs 30,000 in dollars and this in itself may not be a barrier for those Indians who increasingly go for premium cars costing Rs. 15 lakhs and more.
However, the car navigation market in India was hitherto very small — partly due to a "Catch 22" situation: Because there was no navigation software for Indian cities, few owners found it worth while to install a navigator and with the navigator population so small, no one came forward to create the India-specific software.
That may change — with the entry of Tele Atlas — and motivate the GIS industry, here and abroad, to put more of India on the "satnav" map.
Bureau Report