New navigation system to cover tourist spots and whole country

To have national database, GSM phone and camera facility

SatNav Technologies, a Hyderabad-based product-focussed company, will soon come out with the next version of SatGuide, a navigation system that helps commuters navigate around the city easily.

The version 2.0 which the company plans to launch in June this year, will have many additional features, in addition to the existing one, the company sources said.

Dinakar Devireddy, deputy general manager of the company, told Business Standard that the SatGuide version 2.0 will have an all-India database which will include 40,000 landmarks across the country.

"This will include a map of the whole country with places of tourist importance and all the state, and National Highways," he said. Travellers will benefit during their inter-state and inter-city travel, Devireddy added.

The present version of SatGuide allows travellers in six Indian cities including Hyderabad, New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, in locating the destination points from the place of travel with on-screen road map and voice-based feedbacks.

Devireddy said, the next version will also have GSM phone and camera facility, to which the company was planning to incorporate taking the feedback of customers, to make travelling a lot smoother and easier, he added.

In SatGuide, SatNav has taken software development kit (SDK) from Destinator, the flagship product of HSTC, a Canadian company that provides navigation software. For this, SatNav has entered into a strategic partnership with HSTC.

SatGuide navigation system includes a high-end pocket PC fitted with a GPS antenna which allows the receivers to get signals from the GPS satellites.

The pocket PC among others, has other features like e-mail and MP3 player.

A person not familiar with a particular place in the city and wants to reach the place only need to select the point of interest (destination point) on the screen of the hand-help PC and select navigate.

The system will then automatically draw the nearest possible map to the destination point and provide voice support to take which road and lane, whereever it is needed.

If at a particular point, the traveller misses the route demarcated on the map or follow the voice instruction, then the system will recalculate the route and tell the traveller of the shortest possible route from that point.

"This ensures the user lessens the commuting time and the chance of getting lost from the destination," said Devireddy.

SatGuide navigation system is now equipped with a comprehensive database of 24 categories that includes places of public utility, emergency services and entertainment locations among others. For Bangalore city alone, the database has some 8,000 destination points.

Devireddy, who was in Bangalore during the official launch of SatGuide, also said that the company was coming out with a product that will help track and monitor vehicular movement and will be helpful for the BPOs and call centres, in particular. SatTracx, as the new product will be known, will be provided as a service to the companies on demand, he pointed out.