Imagine if you could say 3 words and your mobile device would know the exact location you were talking about. And I don’t mean the area, I mean the exact location. What3words provides a precise and incredibly simple way to talk about location. They divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3-word address.
How does it work?
The what3words algorithm takes complex GPS coordinates and converts them into unique 3-word addresses. This will allow people to accurately find any location and share it quickly and easily.
In a different country? Don’t worry! what3words is available in over 35 languages, including: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, and more!
This app is disrupting the automotive industry and the way we navigate as we drive from place to place.
In a recent survey of new car owners, JD Power found that complicated and inaccurate navigation systems are the most commonly reported problem in cars, along with speech recognition problems. The automotive industry has so far struggled to improve these features. A major reason for this is that global street address systems are not compatible with modern navigation requirements, especially voice input.
Chris Sheldrick, CEO and co-founder of what3words, puts it simply: “Street addresses were not designed for voice. For speech recognition systems, 15 Ammanford Road and 50 Ammanford Road are difficult to distinguish, and many street names are simply multiplied. For example, there are 14 different Church Roads in London and 632 Juarez streets in Mexico City. The correct pronunciation of addresses can also be difficult.”
Mercedes-Benz is the first automotive manufacturer to launch in-vehicle 3-word address voice navigation, starting with its A-Class series. However, companies such as Ford and Land Rover are also adopting this app within their navigation systems.
What about staying compliant?
As cars are adding apps like these into their navigation they will still need to stay compliant with various regulations. For example, for functional safety like ISO 26262, some companies require full compliance with Automotive SPICE (ASPICE) or other reference models. Especially in connected car innovations compliance to such requirements is key, otherwise, you can’t deliver the functionality to your customers.
And what does this require? Processes. These processes are defined, improved and validated with the requirements of the reference models, e.g. ‘Define the scope of work’ in Automotive SPICE (A-SPICE).
It’s important to realize that A-SPICE and CMMI are reference models and not a standard. In other words, for each area of practice, it specifies a general intent and different levels of maturity. In abstract terms, it does not provide a prescription on how to achieve those levels. It does provide detailed abstract information and examples which serve as guidelines for understanding the implementations, but the particular way of implementing is up to the organization. Therefore, each company will have to define its processes which are fulfilling the regulated requirements. Something that can be achieved with scaled lean agile process models, e.g. with Applied SAFe.
