VozNav hiking voice compass

VozNav is a mobile app for Android that provides navigational guidance, especially while navigating off-trail, across open country, through forests or across lakes and open water.

Unlike most other apps oriented towards outdoor activities, VozNav focuses on guiding you to your target destination by voice, rather than by reference to a visible map or compass.

Although the app's interface includes both a map page and a compass, these are primarily used to set your target destination and to get an initial direction and range reference. Once you head off towards the target, you can use voice updates alone to guide you to your destination.

Almost all phones these days are set up to lock and turn off the screen after a short period, both for security reasons, and to save battery. On regular navigation apps, each time you want to check your progress, you need to first unlock your phone. This may require entering a PIN, swiping a fingerprint, or removing sunglasses to scan your face.

With VozNav, the navigation process can run in the background even after you lock the phone and turn the screen off. You can set it to either give you voice updates at regular intervals, or to issue a voice update "on-demand", which you trigger by double-bumping the case of the phone.

Using voice guidance, you can focus on your surroundings, keep your hands free, your gloves and your sunglasses on, and still check your heading and progress without fumbling around to unlock and check the map.

VozNav uses GPS (and other location systems from the phone) to pinpoint your exact location, and the on-board compass to figure out in which direction you are pointing. The app assumes that when in a pocket, your phone will be vertical, with the camera pointing forwards towards your direction of travel (though you can switch to have the screen as the "front" if you wish). A "double-bump" on the phone, can be used to ask the phone for a voice update, giving bearing information and distance to target.

VozNav is a new app, and very much a proof-of-concept for both the technical implementation and market aspects. As such, we have aimed initially to put together the minimum feature set for a practical, working voice guidance app. Our primary aim at this time is to hone the accuracy, usability and performance of the core navigation features, rather than extend the capabilities.

That said, we have many ideas for improvements and developments, including saved locations, journeys with waypoints and so on. Our future development will be largely dependent on the success of the app, and guided by user-feedback. So please spread the word, and also give us feedback on your experiences with the app and ideas for improvement.