GT Maps
Jessica Abraham
Reynald Benoit
Advanced Internet Application Development
February 13, 2007
Project Proposal
Dr. Ling Liu
1.0 Motivation and Objectives
Georgia Tech’s campus is commonly perceived by many, whether
new/current students and faculty or visitors, as a vast environment that can be
rather difficult to travel through by car and/or by foot. Currently the only helpful
tool that Georgia Tech provides is the online campus map that offers and
illustrative display of the entire campus, but fails to provide users with directions
from one location to another. This issue can make navigating through campus an
overwhelming and frustrating process. Therefore, we are proposing a potential
solution to effectively eliminate this issue. Our project for this semester consist of
the development of a web sever application called, GT Maps, that will allow users
to receive directions to and from any location on Georgia Tech’s campus via cell
phone, or PC.
Our overall objective for our project is to provide the navigation service
that would accessible through a cellular phone, PDA, or personal computer (PC).
In the cellular version the user will be able to input a text message to request for
driving or walking directions and to receive the outputted directions in the form of
a text message. Users will also be able to access our system with both the PDA
and PC through a web application. Our first step in this process is to develop the
GT Maps web application so that we can become thoroughly familiar with the
backend functionality that is necessary for requesting and obtaining accurate
directions. We anticipate that both versions of the application, PC and cellular,
will be helpful to users, but expect the mobile application to be most beneficial to
users that are either driving or walking through campus and need to get from one
location to another and have absolutely no idea of how to do so. Our system will
not only offer driving directions from location to location on campus, but
recreational directions as well. We believe that our final application will effectively
accomplish our goal of eliminating the navigation issue on Georgia Tech’s
campus.
2.0 Related Work
2.1 Google Maps
Google Maps is free web map sever application and technology,
developed and provided by Google. This application offers users street maps, a
route planner, detailed to-and-from driving directions, and an urban business
locator for many countries around the world. The Google Maps application
includes several interesting features such as map navigation by dragging the
mouse, zoom control by using the mouse wheel (zoom in and out to get detailed
street information), address entering capability (quickly finds location on a map)
and detailed driving directions generation, including estimated time required to
reach a destination.
Screenshot of Google Maps showing a route from Toronto to Ottawa on the 400-Series
highways.
Google Maps is the main application that inspired our project idea. We
thoroughly explored this application in order to obtain ideas and develop our
projected goals for our system. From this exploration, we established as our
overall goal to provide a navigation service for Georgia Tech’s campus via cell
phones. As a preliminary step, we intend on developing a similar application to
Google Maps that will specifically be used to navigate users around Georgia
Tech’s campus. Constructing this web application will help us to become familiar
with the functionality that Google Maps uses to return directions from one
location to another. In addition, the Google Maps API can be easily manipulated
to aid with the development similar applications.
2.2 Georgia Tech Campus Map
The campus map of Georgia Tech provides an illustrative, interactive
display of the entire campus, accompanied by a side panel that displays
associated details. Since the map is interactive, a user can click on a building
and details about that building will appear in the side panel. In addition, a user
can specify a building name in the side panel, and the map of its location will
display.
2.3 GuideWorx GPS Application
Trimble has recently introduced its GuideWorx GPS application that
further extends their existing outdoors suite of cellular GPS applications.
GuideWorx can transform a cell phone into a handheld GPS device, which can
be used for on or off road navigation. This technology enables users to effectively
manage trips by providing content-rich planning information, on-the-go driving
and recreational directions, and online sharing capabilities through their cell
phones.
Three Interfaces used by GuideWorx GPS
In comparison, the GuideWorx technology, to our system, GT Maps will
provide similar functionality to assist users with their navigation process. As
mentioned previously, our mobile navigation application is intended help users
find the most direct path to and from any location on Georgia Tech’s campus,
through text messaging input and output on a cell phone. Like the GuideWorx
application, our initial plans will be to provide driving directions from location to
location. However, our plans are to further extend our application and provide
recreational/walking directions. In contrast to our system, GuideWorx has the
capability of providing users with voice prompted turn-by-turn directions to and
from any location, whether local or long distance.
3.0 Proposed work
Having an on campus navigation system compatible with PDAs, cellular phones,
and personal computers is an ambitious goal for a semester long project. We
propose to set up the foundations for a system of sort to be developed in the
future. Our focus will be on the main functionality of GT Maps which would be
searching and retrieving directions from one building on Georgia Tech’s campus
to another in a client-server style interaction.
This first step of our overall goal will be implemented on a webpage as a web
application. In creating the web application we will be able to construct the main
infrastructure in which the rest of the system will be built upon. The main features
we envision this web application to have are the ability to receive queries and
return directions to the user, display a map of Georgia Tech with the route of the
query highlighted for the user, zoom in and out to see specific details on the map,
move the map around to see other building and locations in the periphery of the
query.
These basic features that are proposed will enable us to construct the framework
for GT Maps. These features will be finely tuned on the web application level so
that when it can be expanded to other types of systems such as wireless markup
language (WML), for PDA’s, smart phones, and cellular phones, and short
message services (SMS), for cellular phones and smart phones.
4.0 Plan of Action (Implementation)
To implement GT Map we will be using a set of Map API’s: Google Maps API,
Google Ajax Search API and MapQuest OpenAPI. All of these API’s are free and
have ample documentation on the web. The webpage will be hosted on my
student website that is given by the College of Computing. The web browsers
that will be supported are limited to those that are supported by the API’s that will
be used which are:
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IE 6.0+
Firefox 0.8+
Safari 1.2.4+
Netscape 7.1+
Mozilla 1.4+
Opera 8.02+
The Google Maps API will enable us to embed Google Maps in to our webpage.
Once embedded, the focal point and the boundaries of the map will be limited to
the Georgia Tech campus. This limitation is to enforce the purpose of the
webpage, to find directions on campus. The Google Maps API will allow us to
add certain features to the map such as zooming in and out, overlaying routes
from one location to the next and moving the map around by clicking and
dragging it. These features will, presumably, make the webpage more interactive
for the users. Using this API will also allow us to overlay a more detailed version
of the Georgia Tech campus, similar to the one that can be found on the Georgia
Tech website.
The Ajax Search API will allow the embed map to be searchable. This API is very
customizable allowing us to specify custom markers, pre-selected search terms,
map dimensions, color schemes, etc. Using the Ajax Search API we will program
the different buildings on campus into the map using a set of identifiers for each
building. For example, the College of Computing Building may be identified in a
query by its full name, abbreviation (CoC), or by its building number (50). This
feature will give the users flexibility when searching for directions to buildings
The MapQuest OpnAPI will allow us to find the quickest route from one building
to another. There are many ways to get from one place to another on campus but
there are very few efficient ways to do so. This API will give us the opportunity to
calculate the most efficient route from one building to another on campus. We
imagine that our users will be walking so we would like the route to be most
suitable for a person who is on foot as apposed to a person that in a car.
4.1 GT Maps Infrastructure
GT Maps Infrastructure
4.2 Weekly Schedule
Week 1 (02/11 – 02/17)
o Complete Proposal (02/12)
o Get familiar with API’s
Week 2 (02/18 – 02/24)
o Get Familiar with API’s
o Begin Putting together a map of GT
Week 3 (02/25 – 03/03)
o Complete the basic map functionality
o Start working on the search functionality
Week 4 (03/04 – 03/10)
o Complete search functionality
o Start working on the routing capabilities
Week 5 (03/11 – 03/17)
o Complete the routing capabilities
o Begin evaluating and testing
Week 6 (03/18 – 03/24)
o Continue evaluating and testing
o Being fixing all bugs that was found during evaluation and testing
Week 7 (03/23 – 03/31)
o Continue to fix bugs
Week 8 (04/01 – 04/07)
o Continue to fix bugs
o Begin final report
Week 9 (04/08 – 04/14)
o Continue on final report
o Begin power point presentation
Week 10 (04/15 – 04/21)
o Complete final report
o Continue on power point presentation
Week 11 (04/22 – 04/28)
o Complete final report
o Complete power point
5.0 Evaluation and Testing
We plan on testing GT Maps by going through various use case scenarios to
determine if the anticipated outcome of the system is the actual results that it
displays. We will be testing GT Maps accuracy indicating whether or not the
correct directions are displayed, both textually and the map representation. GT
Maps will also be evaluated by potential users of the system. They will be asked
to use it as if they were trying to get from one campus location to another. After
the directions are presented to the users, they can continue to explore the
capabilities of the system. When they completely finished browsing the system
we will informally interview them to see what was liked about the system, what
was not liked about the system, and how the system can be improved. We would
like to have at least 10 participants evaluate our system so that we can get a
good idea of the effectiveness of GT Maps.
Bibliography
GuideWorx GPS Application
http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com/GuideWorxGPS.aspx
http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/504342
Google Maps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps