City University of Hong Kong
Department of Computer Science
BSCCS Final Year Project 2015-2016
Project Plan
15CS093
TaxiTogether
A Android-based transportation application
(Volume 1 of 1)
Student Name
: CHAU, Ka Tsun
Student No.
: 53075400
Programme Code : BSC4
Supervisor
: Dr WANG, Lu Sheng
Date
: September 21, 2015
For Official Use Only
Background
There is no doubt that traffic jam is a common occurrence in lots of modern metropolitans, the
congestion led to the extending of travel time and the crawling of average speeds to an almost standstill,
some mobile applications was created to help build a better public transportation, like Uber, Lyft,
KuaiDaDi and so on. Those apps which can help request a ride and pick people up to their destination
immediately. However, those apps has operated in the grey legal area and caused controversy in many
places. With regard to this drawback, this project is planned to create a new method for an easier
transportation and resolve the traffic jam problem indirectly.
Problem Statement
This project will basically develop a Android application for gathering people who will go to the same
destination, allowing them to ride taxi together and suggesting the best path to dodge the traffic jam.
Most of the time, users can find other users which are also looking for a cab nearby, however, there
are several situations which are not easy to resolve during the development of this application. If the
destinations of users are not same but they are going to the same direction or having a same route,
there is a problem that the application need to come up with an efficient way to group users to ride the
taxi. Another important problem is that how can the application suggest the most efficient route to the
user to dodge the traffic jam, since the nearest route is not always the fastest route.
To solve the aforementioned problems, the project will try to find out a best and efficient algorithm
to group the user who want to ride taxi with others. Also, utilising the online resource (e.g. Google
map API of traffic) to suggest the best route to the user will also be one of the main challenges of
this project.
Objective
The aim of this project is to design a Android transportation application called TaxiTogether, it should
be easy to use and have a high mobility. The application provides peer seeking function, route
suggestion avoiding traffic jam. A chat function is also provided for facilitating communication
between users.
P. 2
TaxiTogether could be mainly used for seeking partners to ride taxi together, so users may be easier to
find a taxi and lower the cost of transportation. The passengers with a similar route should be grouped
together and the most convenient route should be recommended immediately, therefore served
algorithm should be designed and applied.
Scope of Project
The scope of this project includes the followings:

Study Android programming language.

Study the Google and Bing map API.

Design the user interface of TaxiTogether.

Design and implement the functionality of TaxiTogether.

Investigate a efficient way to divide huge amount of users

Investigate the ways to suggest the best route to avoid the traffic jam

Design and implement the algorithms for resolving the conflicts from grouping similar
destination user and suggest the most efficient route.
P. 3
Major Technical Components
TaxiTogether uses a combination of the latest map technologies, which provides by Google and
Bing. Three major APIs of those map service are:
Google APIs

TrafficLayer, A layer that displays current road traffic.

durationInTraffic, provide trip duration based on current traffic conditions, and
Bing APIs

TrafficManager, which contains methods that can get traffic information.
Also, the application will make use of the GPS API of android to provide a locate service to the user.
It will be easier to divide the nearest user (with same destination) to one group.
Figure 1: While users are seeking others to ride taxi together, their location data will upload to the server
Figure 2: After the server received the information, it will divide the nearest users (with same destination) to
one group
P. 4
Deliverables
The deliverables of this project includes:

a Android application providing peer seeking function,

source codes of the application,

user manual of the application,

video demonstration of the application,

a report describing the whole development cycle and the details in each stage
Tentative Project Schedule
Date
Detail
Mid-October
studied Android programming language
Late October
studied API of Google and Bing map service
Early November
designed the user interface of TaxiTogether
Week 10 (Semester A)
submitted Interim Report I
Mid-December
implemented the user interface and the functionality of TaxiTogether
Early January
investigate a efficient way to divide huge amount of users
Mid-February
investigate the ways to suggest the best route to avoid the traffic jam
Early March
finished the development of TaxiTogether
Week 4 - 5 (Semester B)
submitted Interim Report II
Late March
finished the debugging and testing
Week 11 - 12 (Semester B)
submitted Final Report
Week 12 - 13 (Semester B)
finished Presentation and Project Demonstration
References
Google Maps Android API - Google
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android-api/
Bing Maps REST services - Microsoft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor
Get Started with Android
http://developer.android.com/develop/index.html
P. 5
End
P. 6