First off, I am just so frustrated lately! My dad bought a GPS awhile back, and it took you all around the mulberry bush to get to my house. He got mad and returned it and bought a new one. It was better, but didn’t know about a road that we’ve only had for about 5 or 6 years.
So I just got a new iPhone. It won’t recognize my address at all. It takes weird routes on gravel roads to get somewhere easy. It shows the old road to get to my house, but not the new bridge, yet it doesn’t seem to recognize the old road. I tried to map from my parents house to here using the “current location” feature, and WOW did it have my parents subdivision messed up. All kinds of crazy roads, and two parallel roads running into each other and wrong names and stuff.
I know that the iPhone map says google. When I tried it on Google maps, it did have my parents’ place right. It still can’t get to my house the “new” way, but does go the old way and not all around the world.
So I say all that to ask this question… How can something like this be updated? Like I said, our new bridge has been there for about 5 or 6 years. It’s maybe a quarter mile from the old bridge, but someone not from here, would still try to turn down that road (unless their GPS made them go on the crazy back roads!). There has to be a way! Lots of places are building new subdivisions or new roads or bridges – these maps have to update sometime, right? I’ve been searching the web for the answer, but I guess my google-fu is weaker than my GPS. I’d love to suggest they double check Blue Sulphur Road!
GPS maps are updated every year to two years. There are two main mapping vendors that serve the two main auto GPS manufacturers Garmin & TomTom these are NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas. Both vendors have section on their websites to provide map corrections and update notices.
My Garmin GPS didn’t have a two block section of a road that I could personally attest had been their for at least 26 years and this is a main connecting street. Further more, a friend with an older version of the software HAD the street. It also doesn’t think a small section of the highway in town exists so it throws you off the highway then right back on. It does however have at least two streets that do not exist and one that exists in theory, but I would need to be an employee of Warner Cable to use it.
I can set the GPS to ignore those streets and at least some GPS’s, but not mine, will let you add streets. Adding streets would be good because the GPS maps are expensive and cost well over two and a half times what they cost maybe 5 or 6 years ago.
While Navtech may update its maps every year, that does not mean your new street will necessarily be added at that time.
The mapping is done by people in a car driving. More popular areas are redone a lot more often then rural and smaller communities.
Bottom line is if you live in Silicon Valley or near Redmond Washington, the odds of your new street being added is high. If you live in east Bumfuck Montana, don’t hold your breath.
Mapping system prototyper signing in here. Our anomaly correction team manager explained to me that - in a worst case scenario - your data can be up to 5 years out of date, depending on a range of factors. At least this is true where I come from.
Our data team work to a quarterly cycle, with major updates released for GPS device brands either quarterly or every six months, depending on the customer. The devices use proprietary data formats, so the raw format data needs to be converted for every customer. The data release date may not align with the manufacturer’s release schedule, so curent models may ship with old data. Matters are further complicated with in-car navigation systems where release schedules may not coincide with those of the GPS manufaturers or the car manufacturers, and so on.
Add to this the fact that some areas, particularly remote ones, may be inadequately or incorrectly mapped.
My advice: 1) Report anomalies to your GPS manufacturer, and 2) look into upgrading your data. A new GPS does not equal new data.
Not necessarily. They use a lot of existing survey data as well. Remember that GPS devices do not work well in the city, in forests, or at all in tunnels.
Then it comes down to the quality of the survey. That’s why when Teh Google released their “satellite” imagery, often reality was way off their map data
I read an article a while back about a guy that rode along with a mapping crew. Two people a laptop and a GPS driving around recording data.
My Google-fu is weak tonight, so I don’t seem to be able to find it.
Anyway, I have a friend who works for Navteq and part of his job here in San Diego is driving along collecting, updating and fixing data. Maybe that’s not 100% of how Navteq does their thing, but it’s certainly a significant source.
Gernerally speaking, survey data does not contain enough information to provide good turn-by-turn directions, as the GPS systems provide. So they must be supplemented by the information obtained by the people driving in cars. (Actually, these are now sophisticated vans now mounted with many sensors and cameras.)
To give the most basic example – how else to collect “no left turn” signs?
