Lol@, a Mobile Tourist Guide for Umts

Abstract

Modern lifestyle has created a new species of tourist who makes several short city trips per year and uses high-tech equipment. LoL@ (local location assistant) is a location-based multimedia UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) application that aims at supporting this class of tourist. LoL@ offers maps, localization, and routing functionality, and speaker-independent speech input. To stay in contact with people at home a tour diary is offered. Technical constraints like limited bandwidth, connection loss, and varying localization accuracy have to be accounted for. Although the field trials have not been completed yet, it can already be seen that map representation on smart phones with small displays is feasible. Electronic tourist guide City guide Location-based service Mobile Internet Universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) gation and routing, multimodal interaction, and an electronic tour diary. Assumptions of tourist behavior were based on literature (Cheverst et al., 2000a; Long et al., 1996; Poslad et al., 2001) and currently available tools such as written tour guides (Polyglott, 2000) and electronic navigation tools (Durocher, 2000; Palmtop Software, 2002). Tourists are well-educated people who stay in the city for an extended weekend on a trip combining business and leisure and don't spend much time planning the trip beforehand. They are interested in exploring the city on foot by themselves-not bound by any schedule-using LoL@ as an "interactive version" of the classic printed guidebook.

Conceptualising technology enhanced destination experiences

“…Besides the impact of the Web 2.0, the development of mobile technologies has caused one of the most significant changes to tourists experiencing travel. The advances of the mobile market are highly relevant to tourism, as one of the industries that can use the advantages of the mobile information medium most (Brown & Chalmer, 2003;Umlauft, Pospischil, Niklfeld & Michlmayr, 2003). Due to their ubiquity, constant connectivity and access to information anywhere and anytime (Green, 2002), mobile technologies have led to a behavioural transformation of tourists from "sit and search" to "roam and receive" (Pihlström, 2008).…”

Information Spaces for Mobile City Access

“…(iii) Partly off-line systems [21] can have some advantages over 'always on' approaches [14]. A system that is not entirely focussed on wireless networking seems advisable.…”

“…Rakkolainen et al [13] have developed their system to visualize real-time Global Positioning System (GPS) data through VRML worlds.The LoL@ project aims to implement a location-based electronic multimedia tourist guide for Vienna based on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems) and GPS [14].The LoL@ uses a 2D city map as a visual location guide and a key objective of this project was the improvement (speed and quality) of data access. Although the specialised web plug-ins or hardware used by most of the 3D-based information spaces can increase their functionality, their accessibility is reduced, especially to users of less common operating systems.This work parallels and augments existing systems by integrating associated digital technologies that have been widely adopted both inside and outside urban planning disciplines.…”

Context-Based Trip Planning in Infomobility System for Public Transport

“…Systems and studies in the field of infomobility can be divided into three main categories: (i) personal navigation systems: services for navigating the pedestrians, vehicle drivers and public transport passengers (Personal Travel Companion [5], Smart Travel Information Service (STIS) [6], Navitime [7]); (ii) environments for integration of infomobility resources (iTransit [6], Highway Traveler Information System in the Jiangsu Province of China [8], Arktrans [9]); (iii) context and location-based platforms using communications over next-generation networks (LoL@ [10], MapWeb [11], OnRoute [12], Im@gine IT [13]). The most interesting systems are described below.…”