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Imagine you're in a city and need some travel information. You know the information is there, but how do you access it. Enquiring by telephone might not give you the information needed. From the Web? But where is the nearest cyber café? IMAGE's location-dependent information service could provide the answer.
IMAGE is an R&D project, part-funded by the European Commission's IST programme that has developed a service that can provide geographical, or location-dependent, information. It uses a combination of intelligent software agents, your current location and route, and your pre-defined preferences to serve you with the information you need.
The IMAGE system has been developed by a consortium of 15 partners from five European countries. It provides intelligent and geo-referenced info-mobility services, or in other words information that matches your personal preferences and location or route. You can access your information using a variety of devices, such as a Pocket-PC PDA, mobile phone, or desktop/laptop computer. The system uses GPS (Global Positioning System) to determine your position at any instant, and GPRS (Generic Packet Radio Service) to communicate between your access device and the various information sources.
At the heart of the system is a family of intelligent mobile software agents," comments Evagellos Bekiaris, the project coordinator. "The software agents are computer applications that provide a variety of functions. The agents are written in the JADE (Java Agent Development framework) and are fully FIPA compliant (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents)."
"The Educator agent, for example, monitors your actions and information transactions, and builds up your personal profile automatically. Suppose you travel regularly to attend business meetings. The Educator would observe and record the fact that you always seem to stay in either 4- or 5-star hotels, and would add this data to your list of personal preferences. So when you next request a hotel, the system will produce a list of the appropriate grade of hotel within your vicinity," says Bekiaris.
"The system, knowing that you follow a particular football team, could alert you to the fact that your team will be playing in a match that evening," says Bekiaris. "If you would like to see it, the system could automatically buy the ticket for you."
Information corridor and 3D images
The project has developed the concept of a corridor, calculated in real-time as users follow their route. The corridor is used in the process of finding out information that matches your preferences and current/imminent location. Alternative routes are pre-calculated within the corridor so that a rapid response can be provided should the need arise, thus contributing to the system's user-friendliness. If you have a disability and you're driving your car, you could ask the system to direct you to the nearest disabled parking bays.
"We have also developed a 3D image technique, too. We can download a picture that shows a 360-degree view from your particular viewpoint, with important features highlighted. In this way, you can see where you are and what you're looking for. The system has very many practical applications," observes Bekiaris.
User trials
"We have already conducted pre-market studies, and these show a very positive attitude towards the services we can offer. Acceptance of the service is as high as 70 per cent in three countries, but we have to verify this with user trials," notes Bekiaris.
Pilot trials will take place between June and September in Turin (Italy) and Tampere (Finland). We have 50 users at each site from a variety of backgrounds: general public, elderly, tourists, and people with disabilities, all of whom will be able to receive personalised mobile information services. The consortium includes city transport operators who will support the pilot trials.
"We already know how much the service costs to operate," comments Bekiaris, "but we need to test our business models with real users in the context of local laws. In Finland, the law states that if you request an automatic transaction whose value is greater than ¿1.68, the system must ask you to confirm the transaction. In Italy, the law states that the value of automatic transactions conducted through a mobile must not exceed the cost of the phone call. It would be possible to provide higher value services if users had pre-paid credits or monthly accounts. The results of the trials will be used to refine our business models, and will be incorporated into the final report."
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