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Road Products
| Applications | |
|---|---|
| Title | Road Products |
| Author(s) | Rui Barradas Pereira. |
| Level | Medium |
| Year of Publication | 2011 |
The road sector is a major potential market for GNSS. Satellite navigation receivers are now commonly installed in new cars as a key tool for providing new services to people on the move: electronic charging, real-time traffic information, emergency calls, route guidance, fleet management and Advanced Driving Assistance Systems[1].
Satellite navigation will help regulate road use and minimize traffic jams. If all vehicles are fitted with a navigation satellite receiver and a data transmitter, their position can be relayed automatically every few seconds to a central station. This information can then be used in a number of ways to control road usage. It could, for example, be used to charge motorists for using a stretch of road, to restrict access to congested roads, or to inform drivers of congestion and suggest alternative, quieter routes[2].
Overview of Road Products
The GNSS Market is currently dominated by two kinds of products: Personal Navigation Devices and Vehicle Trackers.
While Personal Navigation Devices are oriented for navigation, Vehicle Trackers are oriented towards logistics and fleet management. Personal Navigation Devices are driver oriented having rich user interfaces and not requiring communications. Vehicle Trackers are server oriented requiring communications with a central server and might not have user interface at all.
Personal Navigation Devices (PND) are portable devices specifically built to run Road Navigation applications. This product is the most popular product with embedded GNSS technology only rivaled by the phone with GNSS technology. Although the PND market still continues to grow, it is expected to start declining from 2013 onwards, when GNSS phones will take over the position as most popular GNSS product.[3]
These products that initially only supported navigation now incorporate other functionality such as mobile hands-free system, multimedia player, games, external application support, travel utilities (world time, currency converter, measurement converter, calculator, etc).
Detailed information about Personal Navigation Devices can be found here.
Vehicle Trackers
Detailed information about Vehicle Trackers can be found here.
Notes
References
- ^ Galileo Application Sheet - Road Applications, ESA and European Commission, October 2002
- ^ ESA Portal - Navigation Applications - Road, ESA, June 2007
- ^ GSA GNSS Market Report – Issue 1, October 2010.