Introduction

Local Navigation Systems
Step≪n Kment
xkment@cslab.felk.cvut.cz
Computer Graphics Group
Czech Technical University
Prague, Czech Republic

Introduction

Mankind has developed lots of navigation systems in last millenium. First, and very long time the only systems, were not interactive; the user simply had to search for information himself. We can join maps, for instance, to this group.

New technologies brought new ideas to this area, through use of satellites we can detect our position anywhere on the Earth's surface with resolution of less than tenths of meters, because it is good enough for navigation of the homing missile, it is also good for navigation of far slower car on the road - the system exists, it is called GPS - Global Positioning System - and the system which detects current position is quite inexpensive.

All that works fine, but it still works only on 2D surface of the Earth; we need to rebuild these systems completely, when we need to work in 3D environment, such as the skyscraper with hundreds of floors; also there are infinite number of details in even a small wood, but sometimes there are only gray walls in the modern building, there is a lack of navigation points there. There must be used completely different interfaces, different views (imagine 300 sheets of paper, a map of one floor of the skyscraper on each!). Also, maps or GPS systems cover areas of, say, from one to thousand or more square kilometers, but typical 3D structure built by mankind is much smaller from top view, we are discussing "Local Navigation Systems - LNS". Now you probably see, that there are enough differences and there is a reason to think about this different class of navigation systems a bit deeper.

Index | Next topic