July/Aug 2004

Recent mobile product developments have seen a convergence between routing and scheduling on one hand and real-time navigation on the other, and this trend is very much in evidence in a new product, map&guide fleet navigator, from Germany's Map&Guide.

This is not only a Pocket PC-based navigation system to guide drivers to their destination, but also a dynamic route-planning and scheduling system. In the office, it interfaces with order-processing or customer relationship management systems to assemble delivery information and route journeys and pass them to the relevant driver. New collection requests, for instance, are said to be integrated with existing journey plans in real time, automatically routing the driver to the correct location.

The company says the system can take account automatically of traffic information captured from the TMC system, and can also be set up to avoid known obstacles.

Navigation instructions are provided on a door-to-door basis, and include schematic maps with junction views.