T TrunkFlow Navigation
Concept preview

See the junction before you reach it.

Turn-by-turn navigation that, on approach to a hard interchange, shows the road ahead the way it looks from your car: the lanes to use, the sign to follow, the building you are heading for. One button. Then it gets out of the way.

Concept renderings. These are illustrations of the intended design, not real imagery or a shipping product.

EXIT 24B 3:42 Keep right · Exit 24B 0.8 mi · then Harbor Blvd EXIT 24B Harbor Blvd EXIT ONLY LANES TO USE 12 min 4.1 mi · 3:54 pm Look Ahead GPS good · route current EXIT 24B Harbor Blvd Downtown EXIT ONLY 3:42 Use the right 2 lanes Exit 24B · Harbor Blvd · 0.4 mi 3D scene: licensed imagery · Lanes and signs: TrunkFlow guidance 12 min 4.1 mi · 3:54 pm Look Ahead · armed for this trip GPS good 3:42 Use the right 2 lanes Exit 24B · Harbor Blvd · 0.4 mi EXIT 24B Harbor Blvd · Downtown EXIT ONLY LANES TO USE Shown on approach. Gone when you are through. 12 min 4.1 mi · 3:54 pm Look Ahead GPS good · route current 3:54 Destination on the right Elm Street Bakery · 150 ft · entrance ahead 3D scene: licensed imagery · Highlights: TrunkFlow guidance Arriving 3:54 pm · on time P Parking · left, 200 ft Building-level accuracy is enough here
Concept rendering

The idea

One surface. Four states. The app picks the state, you drive.

Today's maps draw a line on a tilted plan and leave the matching to you. In a dense city, exits stack, lanes split and sign gantries pass faster than a flat map can explain. TrunkFlow Navigation changes what you see, not how much you have to do.

State 1

Map

Conventional turn-by-turn. The default, and where everything falls back to when the signal, the network or the phone gets worse.

State 2

Look Ahead

The road ahead from just above your car: the lanes to use as a ribbon, the exit sign as a board, the junction's shape and buildings. Armed per trip while stopped; appears on approach; in motion, a ten-second peek.

State 3

Junction panel

Beside the map, never over it. The sign's content and the lane strip, generated from data, shown automatically and dismissed when you are through.

State 4

Arrival

The destination block outlined and the side of the street named. An entrance pin only where entrance data exists.

Principles

Built to be trusted at 65 miles an hour.

The lanes to use, not your lane

Phone GPS cannot tell which lane you are in, so the app never pretends to. The ribbon starts ahead of you, covers every lane that works, and the words say "use the right two lanes", never "you are in lane two".

Data, not image recognition

Lanes, exits, sign text and buildings come from routing and map data. The sign on screen is rebuilt from that data, so it is readable at any distance, including the yellow panel that means exit only.

Voice leads, the screen is glanceable

In motion the screen shows a ribbon, one board, one instruction and the attribution line. No menus, no prompts, no counters. Glance time is measured with drivers, not asserted.

Degrades on purpose

0

Look Ahead

Position, network, frame rate and phone temperature are all nominal.

1

Camera raised

Position is less certain. The view pulls back, the ribbon starts farther out, an indicator comes on. No speech.

2

Map and junction panel

Lost fix, tunnel, hot phone, no tiles ahead. A short tone and "Weak GPS. Follow the voice." Voice stops quoting exact distances.

3

Instructions and voice

The route is still spoken even if nothing can be drawn.

Transitions have hysteresis and never happen in the last 150 metres before a maneuver.

Open source

Two editions, one open core.

The navigation logic, the lane and sign targeting, the safety rules and the renderer interface are open source under Apache-2.0. Imagery licences differ by market, so the app ships as two editions that share that core.

Store edition · United States first

TrunkFlow

Look Ahead on a photorealistic 3D scene built from licensed imagery, with routing, traffic, lane data and voice from a licensed navigation service. Online only, on your phone.

  • Free trial, then Pro
  • Map, Look Ahead, Junction panel, Arrival
  • CarPlay and Android Auto once the licensed car integrations are final
Open edition · Europe, offline, self-hosting

TrunkFlow Open

The same guidance over OpenStreetMap and Overture data: clean stylized 3D instead of photographs, offline map packs, and a build anyone can run on their own servers.

  • Free, including Look Ahead and the junction panel
  • Pro adds all offline regions and supports the project
  • CarPlay and Android Auto first

The repository opens with the first engineering phase. Contributor agreement, trademark policy and bring-your-own-keys guide included.

Car screens

In the car: the map and the panel, in the car's own templates.

CarPlay and Android Auto get the Map state and the Junction panel, drawn with the platforms' own lane-guidance and junction-image slots. Look Ahead stays on the phone, which stays in its mount showing a single line while the car has the screen.

12 min 4.1 mi · 3:54 pm 0.4 mi Use the right 2 lanes LANE GUIDANCE JUNCTION EXIT 24B Harbor Blvd · Downtown EXIT ONLY Template-driven. No Look Ahead on car screens.
Roadmap

Where this is going.

PHASE 0

Prove the hard parts

Camera, positioning and data spikes on real routes in one city, plus a two-week ride-along study with drivers before a single pixel of Look Ahead ships.

PHASE 1

One city, one platform

Map, Junction panel, Arrival and Look Ahead as an armed peek, with the safety test suite from day one. Private beta.

PHASE 2

Stores and Pro

Both editions listed, the trial-then-Pro model, the second platform, and car screens as the licensed integrations allow.

PHASE 3

More cities, offline routing

New regions as data and spikes allow, on-device routing for the open edition, car screens everywhere.

Get involved

Drivers, contributors, data partners.

We are looking for drivers in the launch city for the ride-along study, engineers who care about maps and safety, and partners with street-level or 3D data under licences that allow live navigation.

What this page is

A concept preview by TrunkFlow LLC. The renderings are illustrations of the intended design. Feature availability depends on engineering spikes and licensing confirmations that are still in progress. Nothing here is a promise of a shipping date.

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