About me
As a german-brazilian inventor, I've developed a natural orientation system which can simplify and harmonize indoor and street signage, cartography, postal codes, navigation devices and verbal expressions all over the world.
I also grew up within a japanese colony in S. Paulo, Brazil. Looking for a way to reform house numbering in Japan I've discovered fundamental weak points on actual orientation tools. The main gap is
- a simple answer to the simple question “whereto?” (see image 1)
The answer can be very complex because of another gap:
- a simple answer to the simple question “where?” (see image 2)
e.g. where is World Trade Center tower 2 ? (dillema 9/11). Names require signage and maps, maps force to memorize a chain of left-right commands.
During a thesis in 1972, I've discovered the primary reason of human´s failure of orientation: the lack of a master direction. Human beeings have no inner compass and can´t memorize directions. Only ANGLES as graphics or figures can be memorized. Average people only know right/left as an angle, cardinal points are seldom favorized.
Since then I'm developing universal orientation tools based on thousands of interviews with inhabitants of diferent continents:
1997 - First tests with street children on the Copacabana beach. The symbols have been marked on the sand (horizontal marking). The children are illiterate but can read a watch and thus could associate a written number to a direction within seconds.
1998 - First signposts in the favela Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro
1999/2000 - Orientation modells in Munich
Nov. 2000 - Speech in S. Paulo "The Munich Orientation Convention - the life saving signage" during the V CONATRAN Traffic National Congress, organized by INST, Traffic Safety Institute
May 2005 - speech at ESRI congress
Nov 2005 - speech "Education instead of Signage" at Deutsches Museum, Munich
April 2009 - Presentation Google Zürich, on YouTube
October 2009 - Presentation at 10th plenary UN Geographical Information Working Group in Bonn
2012 the Cartist, youtube 2 minutes
2014 article on Navipedia of European Space Agency
2016 app VolksNav makes StreetSmart - 500 cities incl. Oktoberfest
2022 a report for Minpostel/Cameroon demonstrates the superiority of the invention
