
Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car Navigation System - dirwiz
https://www.fastcompany.com/3047828/who-needs-gps-the-forgotten-story-of-etaks-amazing-1985-car-navigation-system
======
Animats
I saw Etak back in its early days, and Stan Honey gave me a demo. I still have
one of their rate gyro/2D level units, and a compass unit. There's a motor
driving a spinning disk, which warps slightly when the unit is turned, and
sensors to detect the warp. The level, for sensing which way is down, is a
sealed cup of liquid with the liquid height sensed with four capacitor plates
outside the cup. The liquid was proprietary, chosen to not slosh under
automotive movement. The whole thing is the size of a soda can. The compass is
a 2-axis magnetometer, about 2 inches square. It wasn't mounted on a window;
it had to be mounted in the horizontal plane, preferably far from metal.

The original Etak units always had the map oriented with north at the top.
That was the way sailors used maps. Honey said they'd discovered that about
20% of the population could not cope with a map that wasn't aligned with the
direction they were going, which is why they started rotating the map based on
vehicle travel. Now everybody does that, and that's why.

~~~
mmastrac
> about 20% of the population could not cope with a map that wasn't aligned
> with the direction they were going

That's me. I have a tough time orienting maps in my head. I still use a
mnemonic for compass directions and (occasionally) use my left hand as an L to
make sure I'm not screwing it up.

I don't know if there is any research into what the structural differences of
brains that suffer from this might be, let alone if there is a name for it.

~~~
learn_more
If you train yourself to use a static orientation however, you develop a much
better "big picture" awareness of the city you drive in, eventually freeing
yourself from requiring navigational assistance.

The additional cognitive load is worth it for me.

~~~
Arizhel
I can't imagine why you wouldn't want navigational assistance. The only time I
drive without my GPS is if I'm going somewhere I go frequently, along a route
I normally travel, and it's a short distance. Any place new, and I'm using
GPS, and even if I'm going someplace familiar, and I'm familiar with the
route, if it's a good distance away I use the GPS anyway to make sure I don't
miss a turn and also, very importantly, to reroute me according to traffic
conditions. I don't care how good you think your knowledge of the roads in a
city are: there is no possible way that you can know that there's a traffic
jam or accident along your normal route (unless you're like Paul Atreides). A
traffic-aware GPS system will alert you to these things and reroute you if
possible.

The thing that's valuable about having that "big picture" awareness of your
city is in being able to second-guess the GPS when it gives you bad
information, which is rare but it does happen because they're not perfect, or
to know that the route it's chosen will only save you 10 seconds but will take
you through a residential area with speedbumps instead of a larger road meant
for through traffic.

~~~
sedachv
> I can't imagine why you wouldn't want navigational assistance.

Here is why I look up directions in advance in almost all situations:

* GPS is a distraction to maintaining awareness while driving, motorcycling, and bicycling.

* Navigational assistance does not help you when walking, taking public transit or taxis. Using GPS while driving prevents you from learning the layout of the place you are in which transfers to navigational competence for these other modes of transportation.

* You miss fun roads when following GPS navigation.

* GPS navigation is useless when planning long bicycle and motorcycle tours. I pick waypoints and routes between them in advance.

* GPS will route you into sketchy situations (like to phantom bridges) that you could have predicted by looking at a map.

* GPS does not take weather conditions into account when routing. People have gotten into floods (easy to see when looking at rivers and topo on a map in advance), stuck in snow, and have even died in the desert: [http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article257...](http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article2573180.html)

I do not know very many competent drivers who rely on GPS navigation. I see
plenty of "GPS zombies" obliviously plowing through intersections and ignoring
crosswalks every day.

The most use I get out of having a GPS dash unit is on trails and off-roading
in my truck or motorcycle, where there is usually no signage for forest roads
and trails.

~~~
e28eta
I know how to read a map. I have a good memory. I have a good sense of
direction. I did a fair amount of driving before getting a smartphone/GPS. I
delivered pizzas for ~3 years, and I'd look up the 1-5 houses on our paper
maps at the store showing every street, nearly every house by number, most of
the apartments by number, and then memorize the route. I drove cross country a
couple times with basic AAA maps and printed Google Maps directions.

I'll defend using GPS on my phone to navigate. It provides a couple benefits
that I really enjoy.

1\. It knows what is ahead of me before I do. Specifically traffic, where it
sometimes provides useful re-routing (although I dislike Waze's re-routing).
Also, Waze's user reports can be helpful to warn about debris in the road,
etc.

2\. It has a consistent interface. When driving in an unfamiliar location,
being able to look in one place to see if the next street is the one I need is
_way_ better than trying to find & read every street sign.

3\. It has a voice interface, which I believe is safer than trying to read my
handwritten notes or the printed google maps directions as a driver.

4\. I appreciate seeing the current Speed Limit, displayed by Waze.

5\. It greatly reduces the cost of missed turns. I hate seeing cars cut across
multiple lanes of traffic (or even just one!) at the last minute to make their
exit.

The GPS _does_ make it easier to navigate. I think that frees up more of my
attention to focus on other aspects of driving: watching the cars around me,
looking for pedestrians, cyclists, and other hazards. I believe that actually
increases my awareness of what's going on around me.

I agree that not everyone becomes a better driver when using GPS, but I think
they could.

~~~
Arizhel
Exactly; I agree 100%. GPS has made me a much better driver: I don't miss
turns, I'm not distracted trying to find some fallen-down or turned-sideways
street sign or trying to read building numbers from the street, and I'm
alerted to traffic backups so I have a chance of avoiding them.

------
DonHopkins
"Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that its map data, some of
which was first digitized back during the Navigator's development in 1984,
would live on to this day."

The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning the data originally
digitized at Etak is interesting. At the time, there were only two digital map
companies: Tele Atlas (from which TomTom got their map data) and Navteq (from
which Garmin got their map data).

From Wikipedia [1]:

"On July 23, 2007, a €2 billion offer for the company by navigation system
maker TomTom was accepted by the Tele Atlas board. This was then trumped by a
€2.3 billion offer from United States-based rival Garmin on October 31, 2007
initiating a bidding war for Tele Atlas. TomTom responded by upping their bid
to €2.9 billion, an offer which was again approved by the board of Tele Atlas.
Garmin had been expected to counterbid once again: with Tele Atlas' main
global rival Navteq subject to a takeover bid from Nokia, the company had
stated that it did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of rivals.
However, after striking a content agreement with Navteq through the year 2015,
Garmin withdrew its takeover offer, clearing the way for TomTom. On December
4, 2007, TomTom shareholders approved the takeover. The European Commissioner
for Competition cleared the takeover in May 2008, and it closed in June."

TomTom (where I worked at the time) was shocked and dismayed that Garmin
outbid them by €300 million on Tele Atlas, because while it made a lot of
sense for TomTom to buy their own map data supplier, it would have been
prohibitively complex and expensive for Garmin, who used Navteq data, to
switch map data sources and retool their entire map data digestion,
distribution and error correction pipelines.

TomTom was so determined to buy Tele Atlas and keep it out of Garmin's hands,
that they raised their bid by €900 million.

In the meantime, Garmin renegotiated their deal with Navteq, so they didn't
have to pay as much for the data, and didn't have to switch map suppliers.

The stunt that Garmin pulled of was, in my opinion, an ingenious head-fake
that cost TomTom an enormous amount of money, almost a billion euros, and at
the same time saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to
renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major
customer if they didn't lower their prices.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tele_Atlas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tele_Atlas)

~~~
zb
The other really remarkable thing about that time for me (I was working for a
TomTom competitor) was that Nokia also paid a whopping US$8.1 billion (€5.7
billion) for NavTeq. This was _right_ before Google ate both companies' lunch
by switching to doing their own mapping for Google Maps using the Street View
cars. The iPhone was announced about 6 months later.

------
theamk
FYI, here is a part which is still relevant today:

"the system continuously ironed out accumulated errors over time by comparing
actual distances driven and turns made with road shapes on the map. Honey
calls the technique "augmented dead reckoning."

That means driving through a long stretch of straight highway could begin to
trip up Etak's system, since there were no turns and no distinct roads for the
computer to algorithmically seize upon. If that happened, the driver could
manually reposition the car cursor onto a location on the map using controls
on the display."

Those things work, but they are barely "good enough". The biggest problem is,
it is easy to lose your position if you are in the city -- maybe you had a few
sharp turns, went around the parking cars a couple of times. And once this
happens, the system is unlikely to correct itself, your only way will be to
manually set position, which most people will not do.

~~~
Animats
No, Etak could recover position after you made a few turns, unless you were in
a city with a very regular grid. The recent path would be matched against the
map to find the best match. When Honey demoed the system to me, he drove
around a vacant lot in Menlo Park to force it to lose position, and then it
recovered after a few turns.

~~~
theamk
I am sure it could recover most of the time, in some places. I am not so sure
it would work well in all places -- regular grid is pretty common for example
in New York City.

You could actually see it in use if you used older GPS units -- back in SA
time, the GPS was low precision (~100 meters), but still provided mostly
accurate heading/velocitry information. Thus, many GPS navigators required
mapmatching (see other thread for details). It would always fail on me in the
most annoying moments, and would take quite a while to recover.

------
shagie
Another system from back in the days of pre-very accurate gps: The advanced
snowplow program
[http://www.path.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/documents/i...](http://www.path.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/documents/intel74.pdf)
and from archive.org:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070112182654/http://www.path.be...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070112182654/http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Research/snowplow/)

Picture driving a snow plow in the California sierras in whiteout conditions.
On one side of you is a steep cliff with no guard rails (not that guard rails
would - the snow is higher than the rails).

So, they embedded magnets in the road that had data in them (the way they were
organized):

> Two primary technologies are being used in the ASP: detecting the plow's
> position relative to the center of the lane, to assist the operator in
> steering; and detecting obstacles, for collision warning. PATH's magnetic
> marker guidance system provides guidance information. This system was
> developed for automated vehicle guidance and control applications. A single
> magnetometer array comprised of seven magnetic sensors was installed at the
> front of the snowplow. Signal processing of the magnetometers provides
> lateral position measurement relative to the center of the lane,
> longitudinal position relative to mileposts, and yaw angle estimate. Binary
> coding of the magnetic markers when installed (north pole up vs. south pole
> up) also provides information about roadway characteristics, e.g. the
> direction and radius of the curves. The obstacle detection system uses a
> commercially available Eaton-Vorad radar, incorporating a digital interface
> developed by AHMCT in conjunction with Eaton Vorad.

------
mzs
There was also Honda's Gyrocator a few years earlier:

[http://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1981navigationsyste...](http://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1981navigationsystem/page04.html)

~~~
S_A_P
I remember Alpine electronics had something very similar. I wonder if it was a
joint effort?

~~~
mzs
It was.

------
teddyh
Interesting to read about alternative, non-centralized, forms of navigation. I
wish modern cars which already have all the necessary sensors would use this
method as a fallback, since GPS reception is not always available.

~~~
nradov
Vehicle speed and steering position are available through OBDII. And
inexpensive Bluetooth OBDII interfaces are available. But I don't think that
navigation app developers have done anything to take advantage of that data
for dead reckoning input.

[http://www.plxdevices.com/category-s/195.htm](http://www.plxdevices.com/category-s/195.htm)

~~~
maxerickson
Telenav implemented ODBII in their OpenStreetCam software:

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetCam](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetCam)

------
CalChris
Stan Honey is a legend in sailing as well as in technology.

He's won the Jules Verne trophy as navigator, fastest round the world (48
days). He's won the Volvo. PacCup with Nolan Bushnell. Rolex Yachtsman of the
year (his wife Sally has won twice). He did the NFL line effects, same for
NASCAR and NHL. He did the Americas Cup effects. He did Sailmail. Multiple
patents.

And he's an incredibly nice guy. Dennis Connor is the best American yachtsman,
but Honey ain't far behind.

~~~
smackdabby
So he's responsible for those annoying digital ads on the glass during NHL
broadcasts? Yuck.

------
twic
> That "heading-up" technique reminded Honey of ancient Polynesian navigation
> concepts that he had read about during his studies of navigation in previous
> years. The ancient mariners of that region navigated the seas by relying on
> a series of environmental cues, such as the positions of islands around
> them, combined with a mental perception of themselves in the center of the
> conceptual navigational space in their heads. With that in mind, Honey
> decided to call his new company Etak, which is a Polynesian term for moving
> navigational reference points.

Ah yes, the Polynesian stick charts:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11522372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11522372)

------
oh_sigh
A little side note Stan Honey is also the person who spearheaded the virtual
'yellow line' visible on every NFL game.

~~~
sidegrid
This is stated in the article.

~~~
oh_sigh
Yes, but not until the very end(which is why I called it a side note). I'm
assuming this article follows the journalistic inverted pyramid paradigm.

------
strictnein
Surprised no one has mentioned its similarity to a Pip Boy:

[https://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagec...](https://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-
small/inline/2015/06/3047828-inline-newetak-screen3.jpg)

And a Fallout Pip Boy for reference:
[https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/120/images/16096-1...](https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/120/images/16096-1-1334124058.jpg)

~~~
feintruled
The Fallout similarities struck me too - in that universe technology diverged
well before the micro-processor stage, with some of our current technology
reimagined with a 1950s spin. This gadget fits the bill superbly!

------
anfractuosity
Regarding dead reckoning -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10833087/MoD-
crea...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10833087/MoD-creates-
coldest-object-in-the-universe-to-trump-GPS.html) seems very interesting.

If anyone has any up to date information or papers on this approach, I'd be
very interested.

(It seems to be also known as a quantum compass)

------
neotek
Bushnell is one of my all-time heroes. He struck the motherlode with Atari,
and then parlayed that success into a bunch of different ventures that were
way ahead of their time, most of which failed spectacularly, none of which
failed spectacularly enough to dissuade him from pressing on to the next
thing.

I truly believe he is as much a visionary as Steve Jobs ever was, the
difference being that Jobs had the patience to wait for technology to catch up
to his vision, whereas Bushnell did his level best to invent it.

------
squarefoot
The way it kept the positioning looks really complicated, why not reuse one of
the old LORAN technologies? By that time it should have been already
demilitarized and transmitters were probably a lot less expensive to build.

------
kilroy123
I would love to see a video of this thing in action. Never heard about this
system before.

~~~
mzs
very good video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHCCjlSWbHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHCCjlSWbHE)

------
yvsong
This seems a great story of technical ingenuity without top notch business
execution. Would like to see an analysis on how the business should or could
have been developed.

------
guyzero
Pretty amazing that they did all this before the current generation of MEMS
sensors.

