: anniversary / technology special

Ingeomaps, the Venezuelan GPS

Luis Manuel García | Special to The Journal
 

Ingeolan, a leading Venezuelan enterprise in the development of satellite equipment for civil and commercial use, have designed the first Venezuelan GPS configured to our country's specific characteristics. The name given to the dispositive is Ingeomaps, and it has been designed to make orientation and national route guiding processes easier.
In order to do so, the GPS dispositive contains more than 150,000 reference points such as schools, service stations, hotels, and parks besides countless buildings and public institutions.
"One of the most relevant characteristics of this software is that it was created to satisfy the needs of the Venezuelan market, which had been requiring for some time a dispositive that could show a more precise, and safer, route system, and most important, that it understands our own language," said engineer Alejandro Madrigal, the key man in the development of the dispositive, and the one who believes that the success this product has reached is precisely due to the advancements and advantages that it has over the ones manufactured outside the country.
In this sense he adds that "one of the most relevant characteristics of this product is that it has been adapted to the popular system of routes and addresses used in Venezuela.
For example, in the United States the software inside GPS dispositives have a numerical base that makes it easier for them to locate a particular address.
In the case of Venezuela, due to its own idiosyncrasies and to language used popularly, the same system could not be applied. This was the reason to design and develop software with 'key words' that the user could easily identify.
This turns it into a unique navigational and route system if you look at it from the technological point of view, and this is mostly due to the complexity of its software, which has been personalized and adapted to the needs of Venezuelans. All you have to do is to connect and turn on the equipment, enter the address you're going to, and in seconds the simplified information appears on the screen."
The dispositive has a touch screen with a 2GB memory card, inside speaker with instructions in Spanish, as well as all Venezuelan maps and routes. Additionally, this GPS gadget can be used as an MP3 Player and it also plays videos in formats like MPEG, MPEG4, WMF and ASF. It can also be used as a navigational system outside of Venezuela.

During all these years, countries like China and the United States have been at the head of the advancements in regards to the development of specific systems and software for satellite positioning technology. However due to the popularity.

In order to execute that function, the only thing one needs to do is to incorporate the digital maps of the county one is visiting, which can be acquired through Ingeolan. Other relevant characteristics of this Venezuelan GPS is that it is easy to use; thus being its learning curve is simpler than that of a cellular phone.
It takes just 20 minutes of studying the product for the user to learn all the advantages offered by this satellite technology product made in Venezuela.
Trusting the data
Since the GPS system was originally designed for military applications and to keep watch over the United States, the civil use receptors that we find in the market nowadays have small mistakes that occur casually, and this is done to limit the exactness for those who may not want a specific use of the device.
To limit its exactness, mistakes that appear to occur casually were incorporated to signals of approximately 15 meters.
This has been established and regulated by the United States DOD or what is also called Selective Availability (SA).
However, if the use that we have in mind for the device might require more precision, almost all manufacturers have optional DGPS dispositives (Differential Global Positioning System) that reduce the error margin from one to three meters.
In order to do this monitoring and error differentiation, the first thing to do is to install a DGPS in a known locale and determining the mistake factors that each satellite sends.
This information will be received and interpreted by the device in order to calculate the new position, thus eliminating the error factor more precisely. |||