Vibrating GPS Navigation Devices in the Works
24 Jul 2014GPS technology paves the way toward GPS vibrating navigation developments.
While GPS technology has gone through many new developments over the last decade, including helping with navigation, capturing criminals, and GPS tracking activity of in wild animals, there are still limitations for the vision and hearing impaired. Most GPS devices either let you hear alerts or see a map on the screen with the current location of whatever or whomever is being tracked. But for individuals who can’t hear or see, they are at a major disadvantage. That is until now.
New Developments
Researchers are currently working on GPS systems that vibrate their alerts, as opposed to relying solely on sounds or pictures on a computer screen. They work by having disc-like motors, similar to those inside cell phones that allow the internal GPS function to vibrate its alerts and signals. It will instead be placed on the person’s skin, so that the current direction can help show the next way to go. The skin has more sensory receptors, which is helping lead the way to these new developments.
Wears would received pulses or vibrations that tell them where to turn. While this is a benefit for anyone, it is especially beneficial for those with visual or auditory impairments.
The Tactile GPS Navigation Devices
These new GPS navigation devices will be worn either around the wrist or on the back. Lynette Jones, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is at the head of these developments. When the trackers pick up on the next direction to go, it will either vibrate on the right or left side, to signal a turn.
Jones and her team are excited because it is helpful for a large group of people, including the visually and hearing impaired, and firefighters trying to navigate a dark building. Additionally, runners and bikers who can’t look at devices, will certainly find them useful.
Drivers will soon have distraction-free navigation through a new vibrating steering wheel.
The newest form of GPS technology is in the use of vibrations to help people use GPS navigation without having to look or see at the upcoming directions. For drivers, this causes distraction when they’re trying to pay attention to the road ahead. The screen on the GPS devices tends to be distracting, and the voice on the GPS device can be muffled and hard to hear.
However there may soon be a solution, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and AT&T Labs are working on a vibrating GPS steering wheel. It uses the same basic navigation technology as cell phones and other GPS devices, but causes your steering wheel to vibrate, instead of your phone. That way, you literally don’t take your hands off the wheel or eyes off the road, in order to know where to turn next.
How it Works
The steering wheel will be connected wirelessly to a GPS computer that has 20 small motors to send the vibrations to the steering wheel, and the driver’s hands. These vibrations use a pattern method, so that they go counter clockwise for left turns, clockwise for right turns and go faster when they’re nearing an intersection. Researcher Kevin A. Li, feels that the drivers will soon get used to the vibrations and not even have to think about it. This technology is still in the planning stages, but a prototype is already entering the testing phase.
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