BT Laboratories, UK, is researching the use of new telecommunication services to collate and provide both personalised and community-wide, time-critical transport information. Its aims include improving the efficiency and use of transport services. This paper reviews an Internet application, which takes real-time bus location data, delivered by new telecommunication services, and predicts bus arrival times. In this Internet-based Advanced Traveller Information System (ATIS), web pages show the current positions and predicted arrival times of Superoute 66 buses in Ipswich, England. The data for these sites is also the source of travel information delivered by GSM's Short Messaging Service (SMS), paper messages, and telephone voice messages including text-to-speech and interactive voice response systems. Features of the Internet system architecture include radio decoding server, the prediction server and user content facility of the WWW server, and WWW browsers. Information delivery facilities include WWW-originated messaging and messaging over the public switched telephone network. The development challenges in the Superoute 66 demonstration arose through problems of decoding and processing real-time bus data. Several location difficulties are discussed briefly.
Samenvatting