Inrix is launching what it believes is one of the biggest advances in navigation in a decade: what makes it better than existing navigation technologies?
If you listen to traffic reports on the radio, you will definitely have come across Inrix before. Many traffic services have historically been tied to the map database, particularly in early navigation systems where the location referencing methodology was tied to the map – be that on DVD or hard disk drive in the vehicle. Even connected services now are still very tied to the digital map.
What we have done is to make Inrix XD Traffic map agnostic. The big advantage is that we are able to report traffic information and data about specific events, whether it’s congestion or incident data. We are able to collect, process and disseminate that data to a much higher level of granularity, giving far more precise detail. This enables us to provide a broader coverage of traffic data, with something like a 25% increase over traditional systems, which are based around major freeways, motorways and arterial roads. What that means for the user is systems can now provide far more accurate traffic routing information, therefore saving time, money, CO2 emissions and all the additional benefits that go around it. It’s a fairly major step forward in the way that traffic is gathered, processed and disseminated.
Have you had any input from OEMs?
Out of all ten automotive manufacturers that support connected vehicle programmes today, we are providing our services to eight – that includes BMW, Audi, and Ford.
How does INRIX’s advance give manufacturer a competitive advantage over those that may not choose to install it?
From a HMI and mapping perspective, it offers the ability to provide far more granular information on denser networks. When you’re driving through a town and following a map, you can avoid the traffic hotspots. But when you’re navigating, the big advantage is, based on the additional coverage that we are able to provide, the system will end up with a knowledge of the ability to route around problems when a destination is chosen, including on minor roads, which has not been possible to date. From a connected navigation point of view, you have far more efficient routing.
Why is it important for automotive manufacturers to break free from traffic message channel?
TMC, as a technology, is now probably coming into its third decade, and has a number of restrictions. The first one is that it has a very big bandwidth restriction, so you’re only able to report incident-based information – whether that’s on roadworks, closures or accidents, or even flow – partly because of the bandwidth restriction, partly because the TMC referencing is tied to the map. With XD Traffic, you are totally free of that restriction. Typically, connective systems use 3G and 4G networks, so the bandwidth issue goes away.
Secondly, you’re no longer tied to the map, offering two advantages. You can report information down to a sub-intersection level. So, if there was a section of road that was only a few hundred metres long, we would be able to tell you about that. Secondly, TMC is governed by how many TMC points are being reported off, that restriction is lifted with XD Traffic because we can report off the TMC networks.
What is the importance of OEMs being able to easily integrate the software into their navigation systems without the need for map licensing or location referencing?
Obviously, you still need a map within the vehicle, primarily for display purposes. But the one thing it does is break this cycle that we’ve had in terms of having to create TMC codes, send those codes, get them approved and integrated into the digital map that will then be used by the OEM. We can provide updates to XD Traffic far quicker, against whatever map the client or customer may be using, so it speeds up the update cycle.
