Please Help : how to develop navigator

[rajanmr]

hi,
I am doing my MCA in Anna University in Chennai. My final year project is Speech enabled GPS navigator for Mobiles phones running Symbian OS. I was completely new to mobile programming till i came to this forum a month ago. Thanks to all the valuable materials and examples here which has made me familiar to mobile programming. From the help of forum members, i have done the basic part of my project.

Till now ,

I got the current latitude and longitude of my mobile using both symbian c++ and j2me
I was able to download google maps of my current location and displaying it my mobile [static google maps]
I am using Nokia E71 for project. The developer platform is S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1

What I need now.

I need your help in the following ,

1. I am able to download and display current area google maps using both c++ and java me : Which is better for creating navigation

2. I have searched a lot regarding navigation, But i am finding no clue about it.

So please help me in creating navigation [any reference, tutorial, examples, tutorials, etc will be highly helpful]

3. Which maps to use google or yahoo maps?

Please help me in this regard.

[ltomuta]

1) Whichever you like more, the technology choice is largely irrelevant for your task.
2) Well, what's really the problem? You have a number of points on a map united by segments. you have thus a graph. Navigation is nothing but finding the shortest route on this graph and then guiding the user, through voice, from one node to another.
3) Whell, here you have a problem. Both these Map APIs provider will give map tiles, with no indication of the graph they represent. Displaying them it is easy, overlaying a graph and make use of it for navigation is virtually impossible.

To solve 3) contact a map data provider (such as Navteq, http://www.nn4d.com) and see how they can help you with tools and proper APIs.

Alternatively create your own simple map, with your custom map data format, say for navigating from point A to point B in your town (SDK's route generator may help you, see Utilities under emulator window's Tools menu) and use that to demo your project.

[rajanmr]

Thanks very much for your valuable inputs. I also attended the Unlock the star forum nokia conference in Bangalore, thanks for your speech there.

From your suggestions, i have now registered with Navtek and going through the available apis and sdk for symbian mobiles. After going through all the developers guide , i think i will be in a better position to develop my project.

Also I had problems with opening the utilities menu from emulator window, but the problem was solved after updating the jre version in config.preperties file. I will also try with route generator.

One of my friend, suggested it is possible to query yahoo maps to get directions using yahoo maps api. If we go to http://maps.yahoo.com/, in the left top corner, there is a facility named "GET MAP AND DIRECTIONS". My friend said it's possible to use that options and get directions via j2me for mobile apps, but he was not aware of how to achieve it.

If you know anything about querying yahoo maps for getting directions, please let me know, that would be of great help.

Thanks again
Rajanmr

1) Whichever you like more, the technology choice is largely irrelevant for your task.
2) Well, what's really the problem? You have a number of points on a map united by segments. you have thus a graph. Navigation is nothing but finding the shortest route on this graph and then guiding the user, through voice, from one node to another.
3) Whell, here you have a problem. Both these Map APIs provider will give map tiles, with no indication of the graph they represent. Displaying them it is easy, overlaying a graph and make use of it for navigation is virtually impossible.

To solve 3) contact a map data provider (such as Navteq, http://www.nn4d.com) and see how they can help you with tools and proper APIs.

Alternatively create your own simple map, with your custom map data format, say for navigating from point A to point B in your town (SDK's route generator may help you, see Utilities under emulator window's Tools menu) and use that to demo your project.

[ltomuta]

There might be public APIs you can use to get a route, but overlaying that route on a map tile will be tricky. Do try to find the APIs and see what they offer, I have not used any such APIs so I can't possibly comment. Also check the licenses for such APIs, they might not allow your desired use case.

Again, if you are working on a year project it is less relevant whether you use live commercial grade data but rather the fact that you prove an understanding of the problem and eventually propose a novel solution for it. As said above, collecting data from your town and storing it in your own format would be as good of a solution as any other. And no APIs would be needed.

E.g. have an application written which collects GPS data as a phone is being used. Then have your friends/colleagues collect data as they go from the university to their respective homes. Later, process the data creating a graph with all these routes and key points defining them. Once that done, your proof of concept would solve the problem of guided navigation on the route from any two points A and B from that map.