Campus Tour COMP 523 Final Presentation Justin, Paul, Florian

Overview/Motivation UNC Admissions Office would like to offer unguided campus tours to prospective students or visitors Idea: Use touch-sensitive tablet PC with GPS and wireless LAN –Display campus map with current location of user –Provide user with information on buildings, such as history, purpose, available services, events taking place there Client: ITS

Existing software iFIND –Developed by MIT (ifind.mit.edu) –Focus on social networking

How our application works User walks around campus Application is aware of user location Application displays relevant part of campus map Map moves with the user Building info pops up when the user gets close to a building (can also be requested manually) If user requests more detailed info, browser window is launched (each building is associated with URL)

General Approach Use GPS to acquire user’s location Request relevant part of the campus map and building information from servers (using W-LAN) –Servers provided by ITS Data is cached –preload map area surrounding the user –load building information –allows operation without persistent internet connection Programming language: Java

Hardware Target machine: Fujitsu P1610 Tablet PC –equipped with PCMCIA GPS card –wireless LAN –small and light (2.2 lbs) –touch-sensitive Development machine: –IBM X41 Tablet PC

Design Decisions Separate UI and map display from map management –Classes MapManager and MapCanvas Use GIS standards –WMS and WFS to transmit map image and feature information (more later) Use GeoTools toolkit – provides all necessary GIS functionality Use PlaceLab for positioning with GPS Use simple caching schemes Use simple properties file to configure app.

Design MapCanvas MapManager GPSProviderNetAPI requests map image tells canvas to redraw obtains coordinates requests map and features updates coordinates when not in GPS mode

User Interface Controls for –panning –adjusting location manually –zooming Info on GPS and WiFi availability + GPS accuracy Map updated –When location changes (Placelab is polled periodically) –When user pans, zooms or changes location manually Java SWT Now full-screen

User Interface

Placelab / GPS PlaceLab –Toolkit providing device positioning for location- enhanced applications –Primary method: GPS –Uses radio beacons if GPS not available (indoors, but not implemented) Access points GSM Cell phone towers Fixed bluetooth devices –This project: GPS only

Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) Geocoded data contains information about its coordinates (GPS position) For example: –building locations and extents –bus stops –voting districts –schools –

Map Services Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards Web Map Service (WMS) -returns a map image (jpeg, png …) without data -Web Feature Service (WFS) -returns GML (Geography Markup Language) data about “Features” on map MapServer –Open source internet map server –Supports OGC standards –Provides the server side for client

Web interface with client Mapserver provides WMS and WFS –request map with specified GPS extents –request features within this extent, or all features Server supplies detailed building data –Java properties provide a short description and URL to multimedia content –request based on building number given by GIS source We used GeoTools to implement communication with MapServer

What Was Not Implemented Event schedules for buildings Orientation Continuous or multi-level zoom Using the locations of nearby WiFi access points or Bluetooth beacons to determine location

Results Overall, works well All primary functionality implemented System easy to use and configure –Properties files Few issues remaining

Issues GPS –Can take long to lock on –Maybe inaccurate ( O(10’s) feet) Display hard to read when it is sunny outside Lack of internet? Orientation may cause problems

Lessons Learned GeoTools is typical open source –Bad documentation –Deprecate methods but no replacements –Javadoc: “Document Me!!” many places Lack of persistent internet and GPS causes problems –error handling is constant –try to have information available

Summary Interactive, location-aware campus tour Displays map with user location on it GPS to determine location Uses open standards to obtain map and info on nearby buildings using Mapserver Works well – only a few issues remain Got to play with exciting technologies!