Video Map

BANGALORE, INDIA: Does driving on Bangalore roads get on to your nerves? If yes, you would agree that trying to reach a particular destination or identifying a particular location in the Silicon Valley of India is even worse! With improper sign boards, faulty name boards, and crosses with repeat numbers or without numbers, you are sure to get lost.

Bangalore-based startup, VidTeq (http://vidteq.com/), which went live recently, is here to help you out with driving directions and locating a business through a unique and innovative navigation concept based on video maps. Sitting in front of a computer, you can locate the place you are looking for and navigate through the route of your destination using a video clip.

VidTeq was conceptualized by three friends, all with electronics and communications background, in late 2007. They filed for a patent on Video Map in April 2008 and the company came into being in last May.

Chandra Thimmannagari, one of the co-founders of VidTeq says: "The Video Map is a feature rich, next-generation navigable map built on a traditional digital map. The Video Map is a video clip of the complete route between the source and the destination with features such as business logos, background music, turn-by-turn audio overlay, road names, etc.) embedded into it. The Video Map has been built using individual geo-tagged video segments."

"Driving directions provided traditionally consist of a digital map, and turn by turn text directions. Directions are easy to follow provided all the streets are marked with clearly visible street nameplates, which is usually not the case in countries like India. Hence, the need for visual navigation aid arises and our Video Map product would address this space," he explains.

"The concept of digital map direction was launched in the US in early 2000. Having stayed in the US, we knew how it worked. If you just provide text direction, it won't  help. The Video Map gives a complete visual of the driving direction from point of source to destination," Thimmannagari adds.

Bangalore on the video map
To start with, Bangalore is the first Indian city covered by VidTeq. The Video Map navigation team has surveyed a list of prominent businesses and points of interest with their accurate location, and captured their photographs as well. This information, in turn, is embedded right inside the video and on the digital map. You can explore the streets i.e., virtually navigate through the streets, and determine your location, even before you step out of that door!

As part of the navigable solution, VidTeq provides the following video map of the complete route, digital map with route overlay, image (Point-of-Interest and Decision-Points) integration and landmark-based text directions. The images are integrated both into Digital Map as well as text directions.

VidTeq claims to be the first one (not just India, but the world) to come up with a Video Map based solution for road navigation. "Nobody in the world had thought of Video Maps so far. They had stopped with Digital Maps. We wanted to provide an out-of-the-box solution. Our mission is to be the world's leading provider of Video Maps and road navigation for developing countries," adds Thimmannagari.

Creating a Video Map
VidTeq has a video capture team whose job is to move around the city and capture videos of all the main roads and internal roads in Bangalore city.

"We have a camera mounted vehicle, which is used for this purpose. It provides the raw video. The raw video then goes through a stabilization process before it gets delivered to the media team for editing. Once edited, these videos get geo-tagged and stored. We have built a whole set of proprietary tools to handle the complete process of geo-tagging the video clips. This is true with images as well," he explains.

VidTeq's team of engineers and technicians have gained extensive experience in developing maps based on open source software. "In the US, Google has images inserted into the text direction. Integrating images, which actually lie on the route, is the key in our offering. Video Maps is the real solution," he adds.

VidTeq has so far covered 60 percent of important locations in Bangalore. The entire city will be covered in the next six months in two more phases with additional features like 'via service'. Through the 'via service', one can ask for a route of his/her choice between the source to destination.

"After Bangalore, we will expand to Tier I and Tier II cities in Karnataka. We will cover other cities in the country as well," he says. VidTeq also has plans to WAP enable the service on cell phones in the next six to eight weeks.

So, when you are unsure of the route to your destination next time, you know whom to tap!

 

 

Taken from CIOL -

http://www.ciol.com/SMB/SMB-Featured-Articles/Feature/VidTeq-offers-Video-Maps-of-Bangalore-roads/12209115997/0/