Mobility agents: guiding and tracking public transportation users

Increasingly, public transportation systems are equipped with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) connected to control centers through wireless networks. Controllers use this infrastructure to schedule and optimize operations and avoid organizational problems such as bunching. We have employed this existing infrastructure to compute highly personalized information and deliver it on PDAs and cell phones. In addition to guiding people using public transportation by showing them which bus they should take to reach specific destinations, we track their location to create spatial awareness to a community of users. An application of this technology, called Mobility Agents, has been created and tested for people with cognitive disabilities. About 7% of the U.S. population has a form of cognitive disability. Cognitive disabilities are limitations of the ability to perceive, recognize, understand, interpret, and respond to information. The ability to use public transportation can dramatically inc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: AVI
• Authors: Alexander Repenning, Andri Ioannidou
• Keywords: AVI 2006, Cognitive Disabilities, Mobility Agents, Public Transportation, Software Engineering