Fujitsu Software Technologies demonstrated a GPS navigation device based on Google’s Android operating system last week at the Embedded Systems Expo in Tokyo, Japan last week.
While the details are minimal, it appears that the demo device (which took only 2 weeks to build) pulls map data and compute routes with a cloud-based service taking full advantage of Android ’s networking capabilities. Presumably this would allow an Android-based GPS system to run on much less memory and processing power than most current devices, likely also extended battery life exponentially.
In fact, the demo GPS sounds almost devoid of typical hardware because it only requires an application to display the server-side processed navigation information on the screen.
Whether or not this device moves beyond a prototype stage is a complete unknown, but it does verify companies are planning to port the open source Android OS to GPS navigators in the near future.