VirtuaGuide A Navigation Guide for Pocket PCs Sameer Potdar and Dr. Roy P. Pargas Department of Computer Science, Clemson University Background What is VirtuaGuide ? Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the Department of Computer Science, Clemson University for providing the necessary equipment required for building this project. Features VirtuaGuide in Action Objective Design Map Flash MX Navigation Client OffboardRouting WebService DB 1.Load the Primary nodes on the map 2.Allow source and destination selection 3.Display Shortest route for the same 1.Create nodes and edges on map 2.Delete nodes and edges on map 3.Mark nodes as primary/secondary 4.Display path on the map Map Technology Future Research VirtuaGuide is a realization of a prototype of a state-of-the-art Virtual Guide Assistant meant for use on Pocket PC that provides a very valuable navigation system for guiding visitor excursions to the Clemson University coupled with the unique combination of mobility and power of a Pocket PC. Completely based on a.Net web service which serves as the heart of the entire mechanism, VirtuaGuide goes further to append a Flash interactive map design to the Pocket PC screen and uses SOAP ( Simple Object Access Protocol ) to trigger the request-reply protocol of the web service. Sameer Potdar, The future of the VirtuaGuide is to be able to build 3 dimensional maps to provide 3D navigation to the visitors. Moreover, VirtuaGuide will be able to negotiate with a GPS receiver attached to the Pocket PC to provide GPS functionalities. If you are interested in learning more about VirtuaGuide, send to VirtuaGuide uses the following technologies to deliver its power: 1. Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional 2. Windows CE 3. Visual Studio.NET Internet Information Services SQL Server PHP proxy 7. SOAP 8. XML SOAPSOAP SOAPSOAP The following Object Oriented Programming Languages are used to program VirtuaGuide: 1. C-sharp in Visual Studio.NET 2003 environment 2. Actionscript in the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional environment Clemson University has a campus that is visited by visitors throughout the year. Most are parents of prospective students, others are inquisitive tourists. At present a tour is led by a person who helps visitors in finding their way, which would be painful otherwise. In addition to this, the Guide also provides the history and significance of each location in the campus. This works out extremely well. However it brings in a certain amount of inflexibility in the schedule of the tourists because usually one Guide is assigned to a group of 10 – 15 tourists and each tourist has to stick with this group all the time. This problem can be easily overcome by assigning individual Guide to each tourist but that would require extraordinary amount of human resources. It makes more sense to provide a more efficient solution to offer more flexibility to the visitors. To build a navigation system that offers substantial mobility to visitors and acts as an add-on to the human Guide, which would provide visitors, the flexibility of being with the group at their own discretion without requiring any paper maps or direction pamphlets. Enter: VirtuaGuide, A powerful navigation system that employs the power of handhelds like Pocket PCs. Used by Tourists Flash MX Authoring Tool Used by VirtuaGuide Administrator Transparent to the User Generates routing information on external server remotely. Provides the most recent routing information Aids in making any last-minute changes to the routes in a Off-board Routing Wheelchair Accessibility Allows visitors with disabilities to select a wheelchair Avoids the selection of those routes that have difficult Selects those routes that have ramps in the place of steps, Dynamic Maps Allows for working with maps of different locations. Same application set can be used for providing Navigation Only aspect that differs is the map and the routing map due to unpredicted situations. accessible route on the map. terrain like steps. which makes the visit more comfortable for the visitors. support to a tour of a local zoo or a museum. information created on this map will also vary.