Georg Gartner

Location based services and telecartography

From the Contents: General Aspects of LBS and TeleCartography.- Positioning.- Modelling and Awareness.- Visualisation and Cortographic Communication.- Applications.

Applications of location-based services: a selected review

This article reviews a selected set of location–based services (LBS) that have been published in the research literature, focussing on mobile guides, transport support, gaming, assistive technology and health. The research needs and opportunities in each area are evaluated and the connections between each category of LBS are discussed. The review illustrates the enormous diversity of forms in which LBS are appearing and the wide range of application sectors that are represented. However, very few of these applications are implemented pervasively on a commercial basis as this is still challenging technically and economically.

Geospatial Information Visualization User Interface Issues

User interfaces for geospatial information are the tools by which users interact with and explore that information. The provision of appropriate interface tools for exploiting the potential of contemporary geospatial visualization products is essential if they are to be used efficiently and effectively. This paper addresses issues and challenges in interface development and usage that are identified as paramount within the geospatial visualization community.

A Survey of Mobile Indoor Navigation Systems

With the gradual maturating of ubiquitous computing and the rapid advances in mobile devices and wireless communication, indoor Location Based Services have gained increasing interests as an important application of indoor ubiquitous computing. In this paper, an evaluation framework which combines the key aspects of indoor navigation for investigating mobile indoor navigation systems is proposed. Based on this evaluation framework, we give a comparison and analysis of the current mobile indoor navigation systems, and conclude that “indoor navigation systems are still on an early development stage”. We also identify some challenges which require further research and development, such as sensor fusion, context-awareness, route communication, seamless switch between indoor and outdoor navigation, and ubiquitous indoor computing.

Towards Ubiquitous Cartography

Computer-generated maps have become commonplace over the past decade. Most internet search engines, for example, have the ability to generate maps in response to spatial queries and routes between specified origins and destinations. Advances in mobile computing technologies provide access to these mapping capabilities from virtually any location on the Earths surface. Maps and map-making have become ubiquitous, and this phenomenon requires cartographers to rethink basic concepts about map design and map use. In this special issue we present five research projects that are focused on the emerging field of ubiquitous cartography. These projects were selected, in part, because they are representative of key research challenges that face the cartographic research community. In this introductory paper, key terms are defined and research challenges outlined. By way of this collected set of papers, ubiquitous cartography is presented as a new and important arena for cartographic research.

Smart Environment for Ubiquitous Indoor Navigation

Mobile navigation service is one of the most important Location Based Services. With the rapid advances in enabling technologies for ubiquitous computing, more and more active or passive devices/sensors are augmented in the indoor environment, indoor environment has become smarter. This paper proposes that by introducing the notions of Smart Environment and Ambient Intelligent, a ubiquitous indoor navigation service can be built to provide an adaptive smart wayfinding support and enhance users with a new experience during indoor navigation. In this paper, we set up a smart environment with a positioning module and a wireless module. Based on this smart environment, we design a ubiquitous indoor navigation system with interaction and annotation module (for user generated content), user tracking module (for collaborative filtering) and context-aware adaptation to illustrate some potential benefits of combining indoor navigation and Smart Environment.

Using Context-Aware Collaborative Filtering for POI Recommendations in Mobile Guides

Mobile guide is one of the most popular Location Based Services. Currently, providing context-aware services/information is still very challenging in mobile guides. Collaborative filtering (CF), known as “Amazon-like recommendations”, is a promising solution for providing context-aware recommendations. The paper investigates how context-aware CF (CaCF) can be introduced into mobile guides. Specifically, we focus on applying CaCF methods on the highly available GPS trajectories to enhance visitors with context-aware POI (Point of Interest) recommendations.

Spatial Knowledge Acquisition with Mobile Maps, Augmented Reality and Voice in the Context of GPS-based Pedestrian Navigation: Results from a Field Test

GPS-based pedestrian navigation systems have become increasingly popular. Different interface technologies can be used to communicate/convey route directions to pedestrians. This paper aims to empirically study the influence of different interface technologies on spatial knowledge acquisition in the context of GPS-based pedestrian navigation. A field experiment was implemented to address this concern. Firstly, the suitability of the evaluation methods in assessing spatial knowledge acquisition was analyzed empirically (focusing on the ability of differentiating “familiar” and “unfamiliar” participants). The suitable methods were then used to compare the influence of mobile maps, augmented reality, and voice on spatial learning. The field test showed that in terms of spatial knowledge acquisition, the three interface technologies led to comparable results, which were not significantly different from each other. The results bring some challenging issues for consideration when designing mobile pedestrian navigation systems.

AffectRoute – considering people’s affective responses to environments for enhancing route-planning services

Humans perceive and evaluate environments affectively. Some places are experienced as unsafe, while some others as attractive and interesting. These affective responses to environments influence people’s daily behavior and decision-making in space, e.g., choosing which route to take, or which place to visit. In this article, we report on a methodology of using people’s affective responses to environments for enhancing computer-based route planning. More specifically, we explore a crowdsourcing approach to model and collect people’s affective responses to environments; an Affect-Space-Model and a mobile application are developed to facilitate this crowdsourcing approach; a routing algorithm (named AffectRoute) is then proposed to aggregate and integrate the collected data for automatic route planning. Evaluation with human participants shows that the routes generated by considering people’s affective responses to environments are significantly preferred over the conventional shortest ones, which are employed in car navigation systems and many online route planners. In conclusion, considering people’s affective responses to environments contributes to the improvement of automatic route planning. The proposed method can be integrated into existing route-planning services (e.g., location-based services) to provide users with more satisfying routing results.

Identifying motion and interest patterns of shoppers for developing personalised wayfinding tools

The development of wayfinding and information tools for pedestrians faces several challenges. In contrast to common navigation tools used for vehicles, navigation services for pedestrians must fulfil more complex requirements in order to be accepted. For pedestrians, the shortest path does not always represent the optimal route for an individuals purposes, as studies have revealed that people often forgo to take the shortest path and prefer the ‘most beautiful’, ‘most convenient’ or ‘safest’ path. People exploring a new environment on foot would therefore especially benefit from systems providing information concerning route qualities, interesting facilities in the vicinity and other useful location-related suggestions. As part of the scientific project ‘UCPNavi’, we investigate group-specific spatio-temporal behaviour and related influence factors of shoppers in order to identify homogeneous behaviour types based on motion patterns and information requirements. We use an eclectic approach combining several complementary empirical methods of data collection and analysis to thoroughly comprehend pedestrian spatio-temporal behaviour. In this contribution, we present results of motion and interview data analysis based on data collected from more than 100 participants during two empirical phases on a shopping street in Vienna. We further introduce an initial pedestrian typology comprising five different homogeneous behaviour types based on qualitative-interpretative and quantitative-statistical data. Types are described according to characteristic attributes identified by route choice behaviour, walking patterns and interest foci. The relevant factors include velocities, stopping behaviour, categories of visited facilities and individual preferences. The resulting typology of lifestyle-based pedestrian mobility styles and the identified characteristic attributes can serve as a basis to create pedestrian interest profiles in ubiquitous environments and to customise navigational and environmental information for mobile applications in order to fulfil individual needs.