The Guide project

Computing Department, Lancaster University.
Reference

Introduction

The aim of this project is to investigate the provision of context-sensitive mobile multimedia computing support for city visitors. In essence, the project will develop a number of hand-portable multimedia end-systems which will provide information to visitors as they navigate an appropriately networked city. The end-systems will be context-sensitive, i.e. they will have knowledge of their users and of their environment including, most importantly, their physical location. This information will be used to tailor the system's behaviour in order to provide users with an intelligent visitor guide.

The project builds on recent developments in mobile computing technology. In particular, the emergence of relatively cheap PC (formerly PCMCIA) cards providing wireless communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) access enables the creation of end-systems which have mobile connectivity and context-awareness. These will be coupled with developments in the field of multimedia information presentation, most notably the World Wide Web (WWW) and Java, to provide the visitor guides. The key technical issues the project will address are the development of a supporting architecture for context-aware applications and the development of appropriate protocols, caching strategies and filter agents to enable effective presentation of multimedia information using low-bandwidth, intermittent communications channels.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the system we intend to conduct a limited trial in conjunction with Lancaster City Council. In addition to addressing the technical issues described above, this will require the establishment of a temporary wireless networking infrastructure within the city and the capture of information content for use by visitors. A number of prototype systems will then be made available to selected members of the public and their views on the system gathered using on-line questionnaires and usage traces. The results of these user trials will be widely disseminated within the tourism industry.