Project Proposal – Interactive Campus TourCS8803, Advanced Internet Applications and DevelopmentChintan Thakkar, Sandhya SivaramakrishnanAbstractLocation Based Services (LBS) have become a popular technology to retrieveinformation about the surroundings of a mobile user. “Where may I find thenearest restaurant?” is a typical question that can be answered using suchservices, in form of a map or text directions. The location of the mobile user istherefore one of the most important components of an LBS, in order topresent a specific information to the user. This project proposes to build the infrastructure of LBS for campus of theGeorgia Institute of Technology. It develops a prototype using which user canspecify its current location on the campus map displayed on the mobiledevice. This prototype then guides the users according to his interest andwork as an interactive campus tour / guide. People who visit the Georgia Techcampus first time, this application serve as their campus guide and customizethe campus tour according to users’ time constraint and interest. MotivationAs mobile devices are growing popular and becoming an indispensable part of everyone’slife, to maximize the features and the services that it can provide to consumers- is acontinuous effort for the businesses and a great research topic for researchers. Revenues generated from location based services are constantly increasing and it willbecome the dominant factor in the near future. Here, we tried to identify some potentialapplications of location based services which will be very useful in the near future. Someof the applications / common use of the “Interactive Campus Tour” will be as follows:- This application serves as an interactive campus tour for the first time visitors. Ithelps them to reach their destination place with the shortest path and highlight thepath on the campus map displayed on the cell phone. User can also find theirpoint of interest (POI) like nearest ATM/bank, food court, CRC, parking placeusing this application. One interesting feature of this prototype is that, studentscan find the location of their lecture using course number or by professor name.So, this application provides a complete package of services which are verybeneficial to the students to roam around the campus.- This application can be extended to find friends within a certain geographicalarea. Application gets the user’s current location and tries to find out the friendswhich are currently within a certain range. This application is particularly usefulat times when user wants to shares his lunch / movie plan with his nearby friends.- Campus tour can be extended to provide the information about any place rather than just a campus. So, user can specify their source and destination place and application calculate the shortest path using Dijkstra’s shortest path finding algorithm. Current traffic information also integrated within the application, so it displays the shortest path according to the current traffic pattern and provides updated path whenever there is congestion in the network. - One useful application of the interactive campus tour is that, user can program / learn the system about his daily schedule. So, system generates the best optimal schedule/route of the entire day according to the user’s schedule. Also, system sends HOT / latest news of the campus places according to the users frequently visited places.- This interactive campus tour can be extended as a virtual tour guide of the entire city. It is very useful for the first time visitors and set the tourist plan according to the user’s timing and money constrains as well as his predefined area of interest.Related WorkInteractive campus tour which uses the Location based services (LBS) to find the currentlocation of the user and provide them shortest path to their destination is currentlyimplementing at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. They use wirelessnetwork approach to determine the approximate location of the user and to get the exactlocation they required at least three signals from access points to execute the triangulationmethod. They developed a web based prototype for the system and currently trying totransform it to the mobile device.Location based prototype system “seeTV” is currently in implementation at Virginia Techcampus, which provides interactive campus tour facility to the VTech campus. Thesystem uses handheld computers as an embodiment of a tour guide tointroduce visitors to campus (initial pilot only for Computer Sciencedepartment). They utilized VTech’s WLAN infrastructure to interpolatethe users’ current location and notify them about points of interests inthe area. The notification information is also tailored as per user typesand preferences. The goal of the system is to provide sufficientinformation to impart a long lasting comprehension of features in theuser’s environment.Proposed workThe prototype system work as follows:- User sees the campus map of the Georgia Tech on his cell phone. There is onepoint for each location on the map. He can specify his current location and hisdestination location by pointing to that point in the map.- Microsoft map point server gets the co-ordinates of the point. By using reversegeo-coding we can get the accurate location of the user.- Dijkstra’s shortest path finding algorithm finds out the most efficient path andusing map point API, system can highlight the path on the map.(Featured Web Interface of the “Interactive Campus Tour”)- For more advanced options, we developed a user interface which facilitates usersto specify his preferences. In this case, user can specify his point of interest (POI)like nearest ATM, post office, food court, CRC, parking zone.- System then calculates the optimal path with reference to the user’s currentlocation and display the path on the map.- Using interactive campus tour, user can also find course location by eitherentering course number or instructor name. - System can fetch the result from the database and render the course location onmap.- There is one another user interface using which user can feed his daily schedule tothe system and system then calculates and provides best optimal path byreordering