Design and implementation of Android tourist guidance app

Abstract

Accessing information with a mobile phone is quick and convenient, especially for outdoor users, who need map guidance or route directions. With current mapping technologies, it has become very easy to access maps on-line that offers zooming, panning, searching and routing functionalities. Thus it is dramatically more important to provide additional cultural information in order to give travelers a unique experience and a deep understanding of Scotland.

However, displaying map information can only happen when GPRS or Wi-Fi network is available. An Android Tourist Guide which is not always dependent on the availability (and sluggishness) of GPRS networks is needed, especially when using the smart phone in remote country, like mountains, forests or fields.

The main objective of this research is to create an Android application, which will support basic functions, like positioning, searching for a place and planning their travel route based on Google Maps. In addition, it will allow people with an additional culture interest to review features in their vicinity and retrieval additional textual and pictorial information provided by Gazetteer for Scotland (GfS). In order to offer these data with off-line accessibility the method of caching maps and data downloaded in the last operation is chosen. In this way the resources on the internet can be utilized fully by allowing downloading maps and data needed in the user’s upcoming travel when GRPS or Wi-Fi is available, and also using SQLite the data can be stored into the local memory, so that the user still can use these data in the remote area where internet is unavailable.