In the 1960s, the Bureau’s statisticians decided that the newly emerging field of computers could help make their maps more accurate and improve route planning for both mailing and door-to-door enumerating. Since its formation, the Census Bureau had always needed precise maps for census taking. “One of them I just happened to know personally through a completely unrelated family connection.” That was Marvin White, who worked for the U.S. “I discovered that there were really only two guys who could do that,” says Honey. Soon it became clear that the team needed someone who understood digital mapping and had the skills in topological mathematics that were needed to store digital map data efficiently. “I read all the papers I could find on the topic,” Honey recalls.
Driving navigator called astro driver#
The device would tell the driver where he or she was at all times via a CRT display on the dashboard, and it would also plot the location of a selected destination and keep track of the directions to that destination until the driver got there. The newly formed crew defined the goal at hand: to produce a navigation system that could be installed as an aftermarket accessory in any car. Within a few months, six other SRI veterans came aboard, including an engineer named Walter Zavoli. He started by inviting Ken Milnes and another SRI colleague, Alan Phillips, to join him in the venture. With money in hand and encouragement from Bushnell and fellow Atari alumnus (and Pong designer) Alan Alcorn–a regular at Catalyst–Honey began to build a business. The pair settled on a plan that was typical with Bushnell’s other startup investments: Honey’s new company would take an initial seed round of capital, and its offices would be located within the Catalyst facility until it was ready to move out on its own.
He began discussions with Bushnell on how their proposed automobile navigation company should come to fruition. It was into Catalyst’s offices that Honey walked one day in late 1983. None of Bushnell’s follow-ups were remotely as successful as Atari–in fact, they tended to get a lot of attention, and then crash and burn–but he had an uncanny ability to identify big ideas in bleeding-edge form.Īn ad for Androbot, Bushnell’s 1980s personal-robot startup Among the companies he founded or fostered in the 1980s were ByVideo (electronic shopping, 1983), personal robots (Androbot, 1983), and Furby-like interactive toys (Axlon, 1985). His company, Catalyst Technologies, was one of the world’s first incubators. In 1983, he was 40 years old, investing in startups, and hopping from one idea to the next faster than most could keep track. On the side, he served as navigator for several marine sailing races by the time Bushnell tapped him to be his navigator for the 1983 Transpac, he had already navigated a Transpac-winning vessel, Drifter, in 1979.Īs navigation was to Honey, entrepreneurship was to Bushnell, who sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976. While studying at Stanford, Honey joined a co-op program at SRI, researching precision navigation and remote sensing technology for military and government use. “I developed an interest in navigation because my father had been a navigator and my godfather was a navigator in the war.”
“I grew up sailing dinghies and my family’s boat from when I was probably six,” he recalls. He had already charted a new course–only this time, the race would be on land.īorn in Pasadena, California, in 1955, Stan Honey was immersed in sailing culture from an early age. Yet as Honey recovered from the voyage, he began to turn over ideas for a never-before-produced car navigation system in his head.
After nine days without much sleep, Bushnell collapsed in his room and slept for 15 hours straight. And that was how it started.”Īt the end of the race, Charley received first-to-finish honors, with Honey’s computerized navigation assistance system playing a notable part in the victory. “I basically said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that and I’ll fund it,'” says Bushnell. Then it could display the result on an electronic screen. It wouldn’t need satellites at all, just a good digital map, a good compass, and some sensors. A navigation system for automobiles could, Honey surmised, operate based on dead reckoning and comparing one’s current location to known points on a map, a technique known as map matching. And so during that watch, Bushnell and Honey began brainstorming about a computer-based navigation system for use on land.
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