An intersection in my town just converted from a 4 way light to a roundabout, and the gps was changed to reflect within a week. Who does this and how???
In: 58
GPS doesn’t. It’s just a constellation of satellites emitting a signal that your phone, car, or fighter jet receives. If you can receive at least 3 satellites’ signals, you can find your position on the globe.
The software on your phone downloads map data off the Internet and then uses the GPS signal to pinpoint your position on that map data.
So, the question is how does Google/Ways, Apple, TomTom, etc get updated data so quickly? Well, they use a number of different data sources, like public records, aerial photography, and cars with cameras mounted to the roofs.
It’s important to note that if your car has a built-in GPS navigation system that uses only stored data, you have to manually update the map data periodically as it goes out of date.
Latest Answers