Archive for October, 2008
PedNav
PedNav™ is an application that helps you plan your activities efficiently when moving around and interacting with an urban environment. Like a good personal assistant, PedNav first inquires about your general plans for the day. For example, you may want to stop by a certain store, have lunch at a nearby cafe, visit an attraction you heard about, or catch a new movie. PedNav is aware of the location and schedule of relevant “venues” (like restaurants, offices, shops or attractions) near you and of the necessary transportation (bus or trains) to reach these venues. Based on the information you provide, and on the schedules of venues and transportation, PedNav creates a personalized “itinerary”: a time-orderly list of events for the day, specifying when to go where, and how to get there. For example, an itinerary may contain instructions about when to be at a bus stop, which bus to take, where to get out, and when to begin and end an activity at a specific location (such as having lunch at a conveniently located cafe).
Thus, PedNav can be seen as a location-based service that brings time back into the picture. The itineraries it creates are made so as to best suit the desiderata of the user. In fact, one of the most critical features of PedNav is its ability to let the user easily specify time constraints for different activities. For example, the user may want to schedule a visit to a certain store by no earlier than 11am, since he or she may have other obligations before that time; or may want to be sure to spend at least 45 minutes at lunch. These time constraints are specified during an interactive session. The resulting itinerary is guaranteed to be compatible with both the time constraints as set by the user and the existing schedules of venues and transportation. If the desired time constraints conflict with the schedules, for example if the user tries to pack too many activities in too little time, PedNav returns no itinerary and prompts the user to change his or her instructions.
