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

2020 video A simple Circle

2022 a report for Minpostel/Cameroon demonstrates the superiority of the invention