Summer 2006

ALK, developer of the CoPilot range of satellite navigation systems, has taken advantage of Philips' Spot software-based GPS solution to launch a software-only navigation system for laptop computers.

Philips announced its Spot system late last year, and it is only now beginning to emerge in fully-fledged products.

ALK says the technology has enabled it to halve the typical price for a hardware-based GPS system, and its CoPilot Navigator 9 price seems to bear this out. Dell, which is the first supplier to offer it, is charging just $53 for the complete product on its American Web site.

Traditional GPS-based navigation products rely on dedicated hardware processing power to handle GPS decoding, but Philips has set out to create a system that will run happily on the main Intel microchips that power microcomputers. These include the Centrino-compliant processors found in laptops and the XScale processors used in handheld computers. This means the only hardware required is an antenna, which ALK connects via a USB 2.0 adapter.

 

It looks as though this approach could now start to appear more and more widely. Cees Geel, chief executive of Philips Software, says the implementation "demonstrates that software GPS is fully ready for real-world products."