What maps will look like when cars read them
By Emily Badger, Washington Post
The Google map on your smart phone is a map made for human consumption. It resembles, in simplistic strokes, the world right before your eyes: road straight ahead, side streets to the left and right, intersection approaching. It talks to you in terms you can appreciate: “turn right in 200 feet.” It flags your destination with a big red dot, so even the most directionally challenged can’t miss it.
“That information is really intended for you,” says Ogi Redzic, senior vice president of “connected driving” for the Nokia-owned mapping company HERE. “The computer processes it, but it then passes you the information, and you actually do something with it. You turn the steering wheel, you go left, you go right.”
This isn’t a terribly novel observation — navigation maps are meant for people — until you consider what will happen when people don’t do the navigating any more. In a future when driving becomes more automated, maps will be read by cars.
