Abstract

Most GPS navigation systems today rely heavily on street names and place names for route guidance. While this works well in some situations, it can be confusing and less user-friendly, especially when navigating unfamiliar areas or for people with language barriers.

This project aims to change the game by introducing landmark-based navigation into Valhalla, the OpenStreetMap (OSM) routing engine. Instead of hearing complex instructions like “Turn left onto Obmannamtsgasse,” users will get simple and intuitive directions like “Turn right at the Tesco supermarket.” This landmark-based approach makes navigation more accessible and user-friendly, reducing stress and improving the overall experience.

The high level implementation overview of this project is available here

Landmark Based Navigation Project - Github

Now let’s dive into the details!

Implementation Details

In simple terms, this project enhances Valhalla’s routing capabilities by bringing in landmarks as navigation support. We pull Points of Interest (POIs) from PBF files and store them as landmarks in a special intermediate storage. Then, we associate them to the map’s edges and store them into graph tiles. When clients call Valhalla services, these landmarks become part of the route directions and make navigation easier.

About Landmark Itself: Data Source and Selection Criteria

POIs are naturally supported in OSM PBF Format (“Protocolbuffer Binary Format”), a sort of digital map format. OSM uses “tags” in the form of “key=value” to describe places and things on the map. One special key, “amenity”, helps us find places that are useful or important for folks like visitors and residents. We use this key to select landmarks.

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