Navigation and multimodal transportation with EasyTransport

Today's intelligent navigation and transportation systems influence the way travelers access information to plan trips efficiently. By and large, such systems derive their navigational suggestions out of precompiled data regarding direct road connections recorded in their databases. They typically facilitate passenger navigation within predefined geographic regions, provide location tracing and direction functionalities over cellular networks or the Web and deliver accurate but not necessarily optimal transition paths. This article proposes EasyTransport, an intelligent navigation and multimodal transportation guidance system that focuses on near-optimal trajectory planning and informed decision making. EasyTransport introduces a number of novel features. The EasyTransport system helps travelers plan the most efficient route and choose the best modes of transportation in urban or large-scale geographic areas. Users can adapt the generated outcomes through an interactive interface.

Design Considerations

EasyTransport features a dual mode of operation depending on the type of information the user intends to extract. In the first mode, Navigation, the system directs a user's transition from a starting point to his or her destination. It traces the shortest paths, typically multiple if any, that connect them. In the Transportation mode, EasyTransport combines all available transport options along each path generated during Navi-gation. These options can include all means of public transportation such as buses, trains, and even planes and boats-supporting the notion of multimodal trans- portation. The two modes of system operation are inter-dependent: Navigation must precede Transportation.