Location and Navigation
Determining one's place on earth has always been of extreme interest. When hunters and gatherers
ventured out, they wanted to be able to return home. The earliest methods of position awareness used
line of sight to recognize landmarks in the environment. Later, within the last few millennia, travelers
began to use the position of the stars in the sky to help determine a rough position. Recently, within the
last few hundred years, specialized instruments aided in the calculations, but it often took several days
and an intimate knowledge of the instruments and techniques to get an accurate determination.
With the introduction of the global positioning system (GPS) in the last few decades, the power to
accurately determine one's place on earth with no training and in very little time is available to anyone.
When combined with customizable and current information about points of interest, the tools provide a
compelling picture of the vicinity and its characteristics.
The tools this application provides make independent travel for blind pedestrians and passengers
efficient, informative, and fun. Knowledge of one's surroundings empowers the individual to explore,
discover, and enjoy one's own neighborhood and beyond with poise and confidence.
The information that Nearby Explorer provides helps the blind traveler to stay oriented. It shows
surrounding and approaching streets, businesses, institutions, and public facilities and offers a
continually updating distance and direction to the nearest or to another selected point.
It provides a sense of surrounding streets and their relationship to the current position.
It enables the blind passenger in a vehicle to aid the driver with directions and suggestions.
The following list shows some of the possibilities Nearby Explorer offers:
1. Increases awareness of exact position by announcing the street and address number of the current
position and keeping it updated with movement. For even finer detail, latitude and longitude
announcements pinpoint positions to within a few yards. All items to announce are optional.
2. Increases the sense of distance by updating distances to selected places as the user walks.
3. Improves spatial awareness by looking ahead and announcing the distance and direction of
upcoming streets.
4. Improves knowledge of the surroundings by showing the distance, direction, name, and address of
the nearest place either in the built-in maps or in places the user sets.
5. Increases flexibility by discovering the surrounding streets with the compass that engages when
the user orients the device vertically and announces the next street and its distance and direction
where the compass is pointed.
6. Guides the user to a selected destination
7. Shows directions to a selected destination.
8. Searches for places, streets, and addresses and shows them immediately.
9. Explores the map by intersections, all streets, or all streets from 1 or 10 miles away.
10. Shows heading and speed.
11. Watches a selected place and provides the distance and direction.
12. Accepts direct input of latitude and longitude points, names the point, and saves it for later use in
activities such as geocaching.
13. Intelligently announces latitude and longitude of the current position.
14. Reviews traveled routes.
http://tech.aph.org/plus_doc.htm
