Arei Kobayashi

Extensions of SVG for human navigation by cellular phone

In Japan, cellular phone service started in 1987 and spread all over Japan very quickly. With GPS receivers and high resolution LCD’s implemented into the cellular phone, the demand for human navigation by cellular phone is increasing. One of the typical ways that geographic information is presented for human navigation is a map. In order to browse a map on a cellular phone, high interactivity such as zoom-in, zoom-out and rotation of the map are considered essential functions. From this point of view, a vector graphics format is suitable. However, the conventional vector graphics formatting for a geographic information system can only be used in a specific system, and is not designed based on the architecture of the WWW. On the other hand, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) defined SVG 1.1 / Mobile (Scalable Vector Graphics) as the open WWW standard vector graphics format on January 14, 2003. SVG1.1/Mobile is defined for not only the PC, but also mobile terminals such as cellular phones. We have developed a map browser software based on SVG1.1/Mobile on cellular phones. This paper describes requirements of human navigation by cellular phone, and then proposes extensions of SVG in order to realize the requirements.