Etak (automotive Navigation Systems) - Etak Navigator

Etak Navigator

Etak's initial product, the Navigator, was introduced in 1985. This system was the precursor to today's GPS-based automotive navigation systems, many of which trace a direct line of descent to Etak's technology.

The original Etak Navigator was a specially-packaged Intel 8088-based system with 256K RAM, 32K EPROM, 2K SRAM, and a cassette tape drive on which digital maps and some of the operating system were stored. The tapes could not hold much information, so for the Los Angeles area, for example, three to four tapes were required. When an edge of the map was reached, the driver needed to change cassette tapes to continue benefitting from the accuracy of map-matching. The system had a tape drive that was designed to be installed within easy reach of the driver, so this could be done while driving. The map moved on the screen as the car was driven, but instead of the color raster graphics display of today's systems it had a green vector display.

The Navigator had address geocoding (the ability to convert a street address to a latitude/longitude point). It worked by using a digital compass mounted somewhere in the car (typically inside the headliner) and two wheel sensors mounted on the non-driven wheels (with magnetic strips installed on the wheel rims themselves). The system used map-matching augmented dead reckoning. The user entered the location of the car where it was first installed, and took it on a short calibration drive. From then on, the system self-corrected: error accumulated through dead reckoning could usually be reduced by checking to see if the current location and direction of movement corresponded to a street in the map data. These and other techniques developed by Etak would perhaps now be viewed as very high-end features for a car navigation system. At the time, however, because there was no GPS to provide an approximate absolute location, they were critically important.