Maps, one of the most essential forms of human communication, have been trapped in print for centuries.
That is about to change dramatically with digital databases capable of storing map information that can be manipulated easily by a computer, allowing a wide range of new services from car navigation systems to electronic Yellow Pages that give directions with business listings.
Two companies in Silicon Valley are staking a claim to this frontier, compiling databases that ultimately will contain digital road maps of the entire U.S.
”It`s a big potential market,” says William J. McNamara, president of Navigation Technologies Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif. ”It will change how people live.”
Etak Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., McNamara`s competitor, has mapped 78 metropolitan areas that are home to 75 percent of the U.S. population. Navigation Technologies, or NavTech, has finished only a few cities but plans to catch up with Etak by 1995, about the time digital mapping is expected to blossom.
Digital mapping is on the market in a limited way and at great expense. The best-known product in the U.S. probably is Travelpilot from Robert Bosch G.m.b.H., a German automotive electronics company. Using Etak data stored on a compact disc, Travelpilot displays route maps-with the driver`s location at the center-on a five-inch screen on the dashboard.
Travelpilot, an inertial navigation system that carries the Blaupunkt brand name and costs almost $4,000 with installation, also can look up a destination and display it on screen, helping the driver navigate.
At that price, most motorists are likely to continue looking for directions on paper maps that cost $2 or $3. But Travelpilot appears to be a worthwhile investment for specialized applications, such as ambulances and fire trucks that can`t afford to waste time on the road.
The greater market for digital maps is about to arrive, propelled by four linked technologies:
Compact discs: When Etak first developed a comprehensive digital map of the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1980s, the information had to be placed on six cassette tapes-forcing drivers to switch from one tape to another as they moved around the region. The company has since switched to CD-ROM, short for compact disc read-only memory, similar to the discs used for prerecorded music. One CD-ROM can hold a digital record of every street in the U.S.
Satellite navigation: Travelpilot and other in-car systems use a form of dead reckoning to determine location. Wheel sensors and a compass measure how far a car has traveled, and the navigation computer then matches the estimated position to its internal map, a system that occasionally can be fooled by detours into parking lots or travel on unmarked roads.
Much of that error is about to be eliminated with the Global Positioning System, a network of satellites that broadcasts a highly accurate navigation signal covering the globe. Several companies are developing successors to Travelpilot that use the satellite system, virtually guaranteeing that cars will know their location within a few feet.
Cellular communications: Once a luxury, cellular telephones now are an accepted extension of life. But cellular systems are too expensive and too limited in capacity to provide anything approaching universal service. The next step is the Personal Communication Network that would give every individual in the U.S. a cordless phone.
The network, several years over the horizon, could allow two-way communications between every car on the road and a central computer. Traffic information could then be transmitted to individual drivers, allowing them to avoid jammed roads by seeking alternate routes with on-board digital maps. A test program for this type of system is under way in Los Angeles and will start next year in Orlando.
Car computers: Automobiles are carrying more electronics, with microprocessors controlling everything from ignition to stereo sound. Manufacturers in the U.S., Europe and Japan are looking at centralizing control through a single computer linked to a display screen in the dashboard. If such a computer becomes standard, digital mapping could be added for much less than the cost of Travelpilot.
If these technologies come together, digital maps likely will move from a curiosity to a necessity. But there isn`t much money in giving better directions. The real payoff for Etak and NavTech is advertising.
Etak President Stanley K. Honey says that businesses spend $8 billion a year to advertise in the Yellow Pages, only 20 percent less than the $10 billion spent each year to advertise on prime-time television.
But the Yellow Pages, according to Honey, have one big flaw: Potential customers are not quite sure where to find the businesses listed in the book. Digital map CD-ROMs can easily hold the contents of the Yellow Pages for any given region and quickly tie the information to a map.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox television network, decided to buy Etak in 1989, financing a team of 180 mapping professionals who are working around the clock to expand Etak`s database.
Pacific Telesis, California`s regional telephone company, and U S West, the regional telephone company for the Rockies, are working with Etak to develop electronic Yellow Pages to combine with maps on a CD-ROM.
Hungry drivers, in Honey`s view of the future, will be able to ask their car computer to locate the nearest Chinese restaurants and get an instant map showing locations and menus.
Nor does the information have to be confined to an automobile. Hand-held units could be provided for tourists in strange cities, and location information could be supplied through desk-top personal computers.
Digital mapping could spur demand for paper maps. The American Automobile Association has used NavTech`s database to prepare a road map of Orlando and plans to use the database to prepare custom maps for its members.
NavTech, with 40 employees, and Etak, with 250, are pursuing the same strategy to reach this pot of gold. The two companies are limiting themselves to building a digital map database, with accompanying software, and opening the doors to outsiders who want to purchase the information for sale to the public.
Etak was formed in 1983 by a group of engineers from SRI International, the Menlo Park think tank, to develop an in-car navigations system. But Etak didn`t have the resources to market its system, called The Navigator, and lived under the threat of competition from much bigger automotive electronic companies such as Bosch and Delco, a General Motors Corp. subsidiary.
McNamara says there is enough room in the market for two competitors, adding that large customers such as auto manufacturers don`t want to be at the mercy of a single supplier.
NavTech and Etak also are sidestepping the riskiest element of digital mapping: designing acceptable hardware.
”The problem is finding intermediaries with enough vision to make a product the end-user will understand,” says Kathryn Hale, an analyst with the San Jose market research firm Dataquest Inc. The product, she adds, ”will have to be cheap and friendly. It looks to me like consumers will buy anything for $400.”
