GM has filed a patent application for an in-vehicle navigation system that would provide the user with a multitude of available driving routes with varying difficulty ratings.
This GM patent filing has been assigned application number US 2022/0089177 A1 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and was published on March 24th, 2022. It’s titled “Navigation considering route driving difficulty” and lists Michigan-based engineers Hui-ping Wang and Li Zuo, along with Windsor, Canada-based engineer Sanja Laptosevich, as the inventors.
The patent application describes an in-vehicle navigation system that would offer the user a “plurality of routes” for the vehicle to travel to a given destination. The navigation system would provide a measure of difficulty for the vehicle maneuvers involved in taking each of the routes in question, ranging from easiest to hardest. This differs from current navigation systems, which will typically provide the user with a single route that it deems to be the quickest, or sometimes a secondary route that is slightly slower and/or avoids toll roads.
The patent says it “may be desirable to provide improved methods and systems for providing navigation systems for vehicles, including analysis of potential travel routes to a desired destination.” This technology may be useful for older or inexperienced drivers, who may want to take a less difficult or stressful driving route to their destination, even if it takes longer. While the patent does not describe what may constitute an easier driving route, we imagine these routes may avoid busy highways, roundabouts, twisting roads with many turns and other road types that can intimidate or confuse some motorists.
A patent application is not a sure sign that an automaker is going to introduce a product or technology, but it’s nonetheless interesting to see GM looking at ways to leverage connected technologies to make driving easier for motorists.
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Comments
Well good luck to them but I don’t see people using this instead of google or Apple Maps.
Or waze
Unfortunately, some of us travel in areas without a cell signal.
I’d like a navigation app that could avoid unprotected left turns across multiple lanes of traffic, so perhaps that could be an option here. If I’m towing a trailer, that could save my bacon.
Existing apps generally do avoid unprotected left turns. The problem is that most people get annoyed when it directs you to go around the block to make three rights, so the avoidance is typically weak. I had a TomTom back in the day that avoided lefts far too strongly and learned to ignore it when it ended up taking far more time, particularly when traffic was light anyway.
Try eco routing mode, that often leads to stronger left turn avoidance as well as intersection avoidance in general. Another solution is both systems that remember and learn your routes, and to go through the directions before driving and delete the steps you don’t like.
Gm has the worst navigation system of any manufacture .The speech recognition is impossible to use. You can lay 3 android phones on the dash and ask for a business or address and all 3 will get it correct while the GM Nav. gives you something off the wall or don’t understand it at all. Waze or Google maps are years ahead of GM. And the they want you to pay 99 bucks to upgrade garbage.
When AV becomes common (not long from now – for example, Ultra Cruise), the degree of difficulty becomes irrelevant as the AV system does the driving, not the elderly or inexperienced driver.
But, with increased automation, this information is available, and could be of use in some situations.
what car is that first picture from the headline?
Escalade.
I wish they’d allow you to put in coordinates since I RV out in the middle of nowhere a lot where’s there’s no address.