June/July 2008

A dynamic satnav map inset into the corner of your rear-view mirror – that's the intriguing new slant on satnav being offered by u-blox, a leading Swiss-based GPS specialist.

The company has been working on the concept with two partners, Paragon, a leading German automotive electronic supplier (and nothing to do with the UK-based Paragon routing and scheduling specialist), and Magna Donnelly, a worldwide automotive systems and specialist.

The MirrorPilot Navigator is a fully functional GPS navigation system, including GPS receiver, antenna and speaker – and it's all built into a self-dimming rear-view mirror, which replaces the vehicle's standard rear-view mirror. The GPS module is u-blox's own LEA-4S GPS module, featuring its SuperSense weak signal tracking functionality.

The display automatically zooms in at crossroad and junctions and redirects users at traffic jams. The software includes various route and device options, destination storage for recent destinations and over 800,000 points of interest.

Initially the product is available for Germany, Austria, Switzerland. No specific mention is made of UK availability, but the UK agent for u-blox is Alpha Micro Components.