From Military to Consumers

• Global positioning, like many emerging technologies of the 20th century, began as a military project that was developed and expanded throughout the decades to assist in military operations. In the 1980s, GPS was ordered to be available to civilians after an airplane was shot down near Russia. During this time, the accuracy of GPS was accurate to only 1,000 feet with non-military units. While this technology assisted with many operations, it was not until 2000 when the accuracy of GPS was allowed to be focused to its true potential of about 65 feet.
  
  

Point A to Point B

• The natural use for GPS is driving and using it for navigation on the road. Companies emerged quickly to take advantage of a new market of mobile GPS units. Companies such as TomTom, Garmin and Magellan all began offering units for sale to consumers with the promise of never getting lost. Early units were simple and offered few features. A generic computer voice would direct the driver with generic instructions that were not specific to the place they drove. While simple, this was the beginning of GPS entering the mainstream market. At the same time, auto makers were beginning to add GPS into the builds of cars with more sophisticated systems.
  
  

Lane Guidance & More

• With updates to maps available to users online, companies began to add features to GPS units that would give them an edge against competitors. Spoken street names and real-time traffic entered the landscape. One main feature added by manufacturers was Lane Guidance. This feature allows the driver to see upcoming turns and exits on highways and, more important, what lane the driver needs to be in. By showing someone unfamiliar with an area what lane they need to be in, the chances for missing an exit were instantly lowered. Lane Guidance ensures a driver knows what is coming up for the next direction and does not make quick changes in the lane they are in, just to make an exit.
  
  

Other GPS Features

• GPS units bring with them many features. Advanced units started shipping with software to connect to the Internet. By making a connection to the outside world, the GPS can be updated with new maps, funny & celebrity voices, satellite data to make a quicker lock on its position and more. Map updating has itself become a feature, with GPS manufacturers selling updated maps so new streets and changes to the landscape remains correct on the unit. By adding real-time traffic and intelligent routing, GPS units can also take traffic patterns into consideration when routing a driver to a destination. This allows someone to get somewhere quickly while not necessarily taking the fastest roads based on the time of day.
  
  

Connected GPS Units

• As features of GPS units expand, there are more reasons to have a modern unit. GPS units that talk to each other to create a "mesh network" are being developed to share data. Data sharing in real-time pushes the technology into areas where instant traffic or rerouting data can be updated and communicated to the driver or even uploaded to the server of the GPS company providing updates. Lane guidance and real-time traffic seems to just be the beginning of active features in the GPS landscape.