Workshop on Position Dependent Information Services

February 15-16, 2000

Position paper Robert Bosch GmbH

Axel Brandes {Axel.Brandes@de.bosch.com}

Cornelius Hahlweg {Cornelius.Hahlweg@de.bosch.com}

Who we are

• R&D department of Robert Bosch GmbH
• dealing with telematics issues, car navigation systems and driver assistance
• well established cooperation on prototype and demonstration base with Blaupunkt as one of the global automotive suppliers

Our status

Today we have almost autonomous car navigation systems (offline navigation, e.g. Blaupunkt Travel Pilot) , due to the fact that the information is based on a static database available in the vehicle. We see a need for dynamic updating and extension of this database, wether as the database itself or additional traffic information from external sources.

What we are interested in

There's definitely a great customer demand for the right information at the right time without any user interaction. This can only be achieved by deploying more intelligent systems inside the vehicle as we know today. Such intelligence ( in filtering various data ) may be supported by location based data selection. As our success relies on digital map data inside the vehicle and the existence of many location based services in the network, we would like to see the following issues to be addressed:

• transmission of own position via network to the application, e.g.:
• selection of nearest hotel
• receipt of position dependent data and further in-car processing, e.g.:
• route guidance to said hotel

Expectations from Standardization

We see a common available and open framework for position depending services as a requirement for those services with rich functionality to be deployed. The intentions and basic methods behind said services are known and obvious. >From our point of view there are two types of position depending services to be taken into account:

• provision of navigable information
• position based information selection.

Provision of navigable information

Usually the information provider makes her data available on an internet server. These data contain additional information that may be used by corresponding clients (e.g. car navigation systems) for purposes of route guidance. For example:

• the user is on her way to the theater, she enters her car and
• via her internet enabled navigation system she gets access to an internet site providing a reference to the theater by a hyper link,
• using said link the navigation system takes over the theater's coordinates and guides her directly to the desired destination: the theater.

Selection of information in dependence on the users geographical position

The user's current position determines the content of the information delivered by the server. For example:

• the user wants to be guided to a book shop next to her position
• an appropriate request, completed by information about the user's position, is transmitted to the server and
• on the server-side is used to select the requested and appropriate information - in this case the next book shop
• finally, the selected information is transmitted to the users device and is displayed to the user

Based on these two types of services many new services - one cannot think about right now - can be developed. Otherwise, every information provider will at least estimate

• her effort to support new attributes or types of information and
• the number of potential users of her new service

A general open framework will make it much easier for any interested service provider to calculate her effort and will in addition guarantee that as many devices as possible will support such new services. We expect from standardization:

• specification of extendable formats for position information
• support of industry standards (e.g. WGS84-coordinates should be supported)
• framework for transparent transport of position information regardless of underlying position determination mechanism