A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Feb 11, 2019

How Augmented Reality Is Going To Make Digital Navigation Easier

Combining more powerful cameras with AI-infused access to a decade's worth of Street View information will provide more precise, easier to read directions.

And as we have learned,  if it's easier to use, it will get used.  JL

David Pierce reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Forget about phones. They’re just the place where Google and others develop features meant for what comes next. And directions aren’t the point either. AR maps could help you learn more about everything you pass. GPS tells Google Maps where I am, then the app tries to match what the camera is seeing with a decade’s worth of Street View data. Google (now has) a three-dimensional map of the world that it can search every time you open. The app even prevents you from using the camera too much.
My phone knows where I am at all times: There’s just no hiding from that blue dot in Google Maps.
Well, except for when the blue dot thinks I am across the street, or inside the restaurant two doors down. More than once, blue-dot issues have caused me to walk a considerable way in the wrong direction.
In fairness, even when GPS is screwy, it’s typically close enough for driving. But when a drone’s dropping a package on your stoop, close isn’t good enough. Self-driving cars can’t muddle through for a few dozen yards the way a human driver can. Honestly, even if you’re just looking for your Uber driver or Lime scooter, locations need to be more exact.
By making use of smartphone cameras, apps can get a more-detailed sense of where you are and where you need to go. The app knows which direction you are pointing in, even what you’re looking at. And because it’s all seen through a camera view on your phone, the app can layer directions on top of the real world, turning navigation into an augmented-reality experience.
Lots of companies are working on improving your maps, but nobody’s maps matter more than Google’s. The company announced an AR walking feature for Google Maps at its developer conference last May and now is making it available to some users before a wider release coming... later. (Google says only that it requires more testing.)
I got a chance to test an early version of the feature and, while it isn’t likely to be your primary turn-by-turn option, it’s a huge step in the right direction for Google Maps—and for me.
Walk this way
When I opened the Google Maps preview app and searched for coffee shops, it looked the same as before. But when I chose one, I saw a new option: “Start AR.” I tapped it and the familiar map vanished, replaced by a real-time view of the world in front of me.
The app instructed me to move my phone around and point its camera at things across the street while it tried to figure out my location. After a few seconds, the camera seemed to recognize some landmarks and realize where it was, with remarkable precision.
This really is a new way to get location. GPS tells Google Maps roughly where I am, then the app tries to match what the camera is seeing with a decade’s worth of Street View data. Those roving cars with spinning cameras have been capturing images the world over, recording where the car is and what the camera sees at the time. They have given Google a three-dimensional map of the world that it can search every time you open the camera.
A moment after the app found me, a set of bold, can’t-miss-’em 3-D arrows appeared on my phone screen, hovering in the middle of the street. The arrows pointed right, so I headed right. That’s when a rectangular blue sign appeared, floating above the sidewalk: 249 feet until my next turn. At the corner, the arrows again pointed right, and down the street a phone booth-size red pin marked my destination. It was as if Maps had drawn my directions onto the real world, though nobody else could see them.
Google is very clear that this feature isn’t for use while driving. And nifty as it is, the AR feature isn’t even supposed to be the primary way you get around, said Rachel Inman, Google’s user-experience lead on the AR project. It can be helpful in particularly complicated intersections, or when the alley you’re looking for is well-hidden. “It’s for those moments like, ‘I’m getting off the subway, where do I go first?’” she said.The app even prevents you from using the camera too much. If you’re in AR and you lower your phone, the app will flip to the standard map. If you hold it in front of your face too long, it pesters you to put the phone down, eventually darkening the screen. That kind of nagging will help your phone’s battery and data cap—and keep you from wandering into the street—but in the early software I was using, the alerts sometimes got in the way of real navigation.
I found the AR feature most useful at the beginning of a journey. Usually when I’m heading somewhere new, I pick a direction, start walking then check the blue dot halfway down the block to see if I’m going the right way. Often I am not. With Google’s AR view, I could fire up the camera, check my surroundings and set off with much more confidence.
Seeing is believing
The final form of AR navigation probably won’t look exactly like the Maps feature I tested. AR could be particularly useful indoors, for instance, but Google doesn’t (yet) have detailed data about my apartment complex.
Ms. Inman said Google is still tweaking even basic things like the look of the arrows. One version of the feature laid a blue path on the ground, but Google found people tried to follow it too exactly. Another employed an adorable animated guide named Pizza Man, but he made users look at their phone too long. The team picked giant arrows because they were obvious but not distracting, but even that could change.
Forget about our phones entirely, though. They’re just the place where Google and others can conveniently develop features meant for what comes next. Someday, when we start buying AR glasses, persistent AR directions might make a lot of sense.
And directions aren’t the sole point either. AR maps could help you learn more about everything you pass. Tory Smith, product strategy lead for autonomous vehicles at Mapbox, a navigation startup, envisions a possible future in which your windshield could display the nearest parking garage, then tell you how many spots are open, how much it costs and whether there’s a good coffee shop nearby. You might someday navigate indoors—where GPS doesn’t work—using AR maps, with Google Translate instantly turning every sign you pass into your own language.This is all long-term stuff. Even the new Maps I saw won’t be widely available for a while. It is rolling out soon to a few Local Guides, who are the service’s most dedicated reviewers and users, and will come to everyone only when Google is satisfied that it’s ready. Most of us will have to make do with regular old 2-D maps for a while longer. But pretty soon augmented reality might fix the blue dot once and for all.

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