I recently had the opportunity to use two different GPS systems, one by Mio and the other by Magellan. Apart from the fact that the interfaces varied greatly I was wondering how the underlying technology worked. Reading lots of reviews and stumbling upon a site catered to GPS systems ( GPS Magazine ) I finally found that Mio, Magellan, Garmin, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and probably every other person who makes use of maps in their products uses data provided by either Navteq or TeleNav. After all the reviews (that have been extremely well done by the site) it boils down to the fact that it is the algorithm that makes the difference in providing the routes.
How intelligence is built into the system is a whole different issue, but just providing the shortest routes from the point of departure to the point of destination itself seems like a major task. I was just wondering how primitive the traveling salesman/shortest path algorithms might be in comparison to what these guys might have built to provide the routing.
However, none of the systems seem to have enough intelligence to know how to take shortcuts. Probably its there on the higher end systems, but then I haven't tested/tried any of them. Sometime in the future I see myself sitting in a car, punching in my destination and not even having to lift another finger. I will be there. (Considering Lexus already has the autopark feature done)
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