Google Maps gets AR indoor navigation, new eco-friendly route options

Google Maps has introduced a slew of new features coming quickly, starting from on-map climate updates to AR-powered indoor navigation. There’s so much to cowl, and the corporate says it’s on observe to ship “over 100 AI-powered enhancements to Google Maps” this yr.

First, there is a new UI for instructions. Today, the route UI makes use of tabs for every transportation sort: one for driving, then mass transit, strolling, trip shares, and biking. In this redesign, all the things seems in a flat record, however now you’ll be able to hit the “options” button and set most popular modes of transportation. You can prioritize routing options for driving, strolling, trains, buses, bikes, bikes, trip shares, “bike and scooter shares,” and ferries. You may even choose a number of gadgets, so all of your prime selections might be first within the record.

Some of the route options can have somewhat inexperienced leaf subsequent to them, which is a part of Google Maps’ new concentrate on selling cleaner strategies of transportation. For driving, Google Maps’ routing display will quickly bear in mind gasoline effectivity, and you may begin to see a inexperienced leaf subsequent to the fuel-efficient routes, too. For many locations, the shortest route is probably the most fuel-efficient, so not a lot will change. But Google Maps will calculate issues like visitors, begins and stops, and highway elevation (a serious concern in Google’s yard of California) to give you a CO₂ ranking for every journey. If it finds a route that’s extra fuel-efficient however longer, it would inform you about it, and if each routes take the identical period of time, gasoline effectivity might be used because the tiebreaker for the default route.

Google says each options will launch someday this yr.

Google Maps takes on the climate

There are two new layers coming to Google Maps that put the service in a little bit of competitors along with your favourite climate app: air high quality and climate layers. Weather is nearly all the time one thing you need to look into earlier than touring, and shortly you can get that data proper in Google Maps. For allergy victims or folks in locations the place air high quality is often a problem, seeing that information simply might be useful, too.

Google says, “Data from companions like The Weather Company, AirNow.gov and the Central Pollution Board energy these layers that begin rolling out on Android and iOS within the coming months. The climate layer might be accessible globally, and the air high quality layer will launch in Australia, India, and the US, with extra nations to return.”

For now, the presentation of this data may be very restricted. The most blatant solution to show climate and air high quality knowledge is with an overlay displaying the rain and air in a radar view, with various colours denoting the depth. Google Maps solely shows this knowledge as tiny, random dots on the map, just like how factors of curiosity are displayed. This makes it tough to find out the place rain begins and stops, how lengthy it would cling round for, whether or not it would get higher or worse within the subsequent few hours, or how dangerous the climate might be when you’re driving there. Adding this data immediately into Google Maps would in all probability lower a giant chunk out of the climate app trade, since overlaid knowledge on Google Maps is a core characteristic, however possibly Google is extra receptive to a first-party climate resolution now that Apple is investing within the space with its acquisition of Dark Sky.

Indoor AR navigation

Google Maps AR Navigation is shifting indoors. The characteristic rolled out to iPhone and Android units in choose cities in 2019 and makes use of AR Core-based 3D sensing and Google’s trove of street-view imagery to find out your route through the digital camera and what it’s pointed at. Outdoors, the characteristic ended up being the world’s most complex substitute for a compass, however compasses in telephones (particularly Android telephones) simply aren’t that correct and are vulnerable to interference, so getting the preliminary strolling route proper utilizing solely a compass generally is a problem. AR Navigation, along with the cool 3D visuals overlaid on a digital camera, actually is a giant assist.

It appears like AR Navigation goes to actually shine when it strikes to indoor navigation. Google demoed the characteristic in an airport terminal, the place it will possibly do issues like determine your location (GPS does not work indoors) and determine what flooring you are on. In the demo, it tells somebody the place the escalator is and to go down a degree to succeed in their terminal. Google says it desires to roll this know-how out to “airports, transit stations, and malls,” the place will probably be in a position to “make it easier to discover the closest elevator and escalators, your gate, platform, baggage declare, check-in counters, ticket workplace, restrooms, ATMs and extra.”

Indoor navigation has been one thing Google has frequently tried to get companies to undertake, pitching options like Wi-Fi RTT—Wi-Fi-based positioning—which was constructed into Android 9. I believe the corporate has realized that any technique that requires unbiased companies to put in and preserve some form of technical infrastructure is not going to work. AR Navigation appears like a extra scalable various as a result of Google can do all of the work itself. It’s powered by nothing however your digital camera and a bunch of images saved on Google Maps—Google calls this VPS, or Visual Positioning System—and it is mainly AI-powered landmark navigation.

VPS knowledge is identical as Street View knowledge, so it will possibly scale the identical method Street View scales, by sending out hordes of contractors all over the world to {photograph} all the things with particular gear. You may declare that photographing each main indoor public area is an excessive amount of work, however Google has already proved it will possibly do that with Street View. The firm professionally manufactures its personal Street View backpacks now, so sending a contractor on a fast march by way of your native airport, prepare station, or mall needs to be sufficient for VPS knowledge. “Just go {photograph} the whole world” is totally inside Google’s capabilities.

Google calls the characteristic “Indoor Live View” and says it “is reside now on Android and iOS in quite a few malls in Chicago, Long Island, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, San José, and Seattle. It begins rolling out within the coming months in choose airports, malls, and transit stations in Tokyo and Zurich, with extra cities on the best way.”

Now, if we may simply get this in an AR-version of Google Glass, that might be nice.