STEP NAVI

A Navigation Support System by Visualization of Walking Speed

Kazuya Fujisawa

and Michiaki Yasumura

Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan

Faculity of Environment and Information studies, Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan

Keywords:

Navigation, Walking Speed, Gradation, GPS, Location Information.

Abstract:

In recent years, users of walking navigation services is increasing with the spread of smart phones, such as

iPhone and Android. Walking navigation utilizes GPS function in a smart phone to ﬁnd out current position

of a user. When using route navigation, users would like to arrive at their destination correctly. However, in

many cases, this is not the only purpose that they would like to accomplish. They also would like to arrive at

the destination in time. In this research, we propose a system called “StepNavi” that allows a user to know

current walking speed is over paced or under paced.

1 INTRODUCTION

In this research, we propose a speed navigation sys-

tem called “StepNavi” which presents the optimal

pace as support for arrival at the destination in time.

In recent years, users of walking navigation ser-

vices is increasing with the spread of smart phones,

such as iPhone and Android. Walking navigation uti-

lizes GPS function in a smart phone to ﬁnd out cur-

rent position of a user. Together with destination in-

formation, detailed route navigation help the user ar-

rive at the destination without seeing the map of paper

medium. When using route navigation, users would

like to arrive at their destination correctly. However,

in many cases, this is not the only purpose that they

would like to accomplish. They also would like to ar-

rive at the destination in time. At present, whether the

user will be in time for a target time or not is left to the

user. As a result, one user may be too late for the tar-

get time, another may be too early, thus giving them

some uneasiness while using navigation systems.

In this research, we propose a system called “Step-

Navi” that allows a user to know current walking

speed is over paced or under paced. Walking speed

is computed based on user’s positions and travel time

between them. Besides a numerical display, the sys-

tem displays the walking speed of user’s in an intu-

itive interface, which helps users understand adequate

pace of walking.

2 STEP NAVI

Figure 1 expresses the novelty of this research

“StepNavi”. “StepNavi” performs speed Navigation.

Speed navigation is realized based on the existing

route navigation. Speed Navigation is using walking

speed and arrival time and offers various support.

Figure 2 is a screen of screenshot of this system

“STEP NAVI”. The purpose of ”STEP NAVI” is to

allows a user to know current walking speed is over

paced or under paced. Walking speed is computed

based on user’s positions and travel time between

them, it visualizes with the intuitive interface which

proposed a speed information for a user.

Figure 1: Novelty.

788

Fujisawa K. and Yasumura M..

STEP NAVI - A Navigation Support System by Visualization of Walking Speed.

DOI: 10.5220/0003926807880790

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (IVAPP-2012), pages 788-790

ISBN: 978-989-8565-02-0

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Figure 2: Step Navi.

2.1 Gradation Interface

This system displays current speed and necessary

speed as a numerical value of speed per minute.

However, since we hardly consider walking speed by

speed per minute or speed per hour, we considered

that the intuitive interface which can understand nec-

essary speed is required.

Figure 3 shows the proposed gradation interface.

It is a gradation bar from red to blue, yellow sphere

expresses a user’s current speed and a central pur-

ple portion expresses necessary speed. Moreover, it

expresses that a left-hand side of red portion has a

low pace and a right-hand side of blue portion has an

high pace. Therefore, if a sphere is on the right from

the center, it turns out that the user can arrive earlier

than time to reach. A left end expresses speed 0 m/s

and the right end expresses speed twice the necessary

speed. However, since necessary speed is computed

from the remaining distance and the remaining time,

it changes relatively.

Figure 3: Gradation interface.

2.2 Display of a Track

Figure 4 shows the user’s track. The color of the cur-

rent speed in the moment is added to a user’s track.

The color of the current speed is a color in the po-

sition where the sphere which expresses the current

speed was displayed on gradation Interface of Figure

3. When a user judges that the current speed is low

pace and pick up the pace, it is for understanding pick

up the pace by seeing change of the color of the track.

Since the user can understand intuitively know how

much speed are ﬂuctuating, it becomes unnecessary

for a user to look at a screen frequently.

Figure 4: Display of the user’s track.

2.3 Surrounding Facilities

Figure 5 shows the structure of the system. A sur-

rounding facilities is recommended according to be-

tween a user’s arrival time. Only a cafe and a conve-

nience store are recommended now.

STEP NAVI - A Navigation Support System by Visualization of Walking Speed

789

Figure 5: Surrounding facilities.

3 IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 6 shows the structure of the system. This sys-

tem is divided into two main classes, a client side

and a server side . In client side, navigation is per-

formed using Google maps API which Google offers.

In server side, recommendation is performed using

Open Local Platform which Yahoo offers.

Figure 6: The system conﬁguration diagram.

4 DISCUSSION

Since this system is carrying out positioning of the lo-

cation information using the GPS function of a smart

phone, a user’s walking speed computed from loca-

tion information is dependent on the accuracy of po-

sitioning. Now, the acquisition accuracy of GPS is set

up highly and only location information with a high

accuracy value is acquired. However, a place with

many buildings and the place where the positioning

by GPS is difﬁcult, it may acquire the location infor-

mation from which it may be separated greatly from

a its present location. Therefore, distance is period-

ically computed from two or more location informa-

tion, and when distance becomes large, it is necessary

to delete as a noise.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In the conventional navigation, a user has the uneasi-

ness whether the current walk pace good or not, when

the pace is too late, the problem the user can’t reach

in time as a result many occur. Then, we computed

the user’s walking speed in real time, and considered

that it should make it compare with necessary speed.

In this research, we proposed a concept as speed navi-

gation and prototyped the ”StepNavi” which displays

a user’s walking speed and necessary speed.

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Google (2011a). Goole maps api. http://code.google.com/

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Google (2011b). Mobile google map. http://www.google.

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ItumoNAVI (2011). http://www.its-mo.com/.

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Nike+GPS (2011). http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/nike-

gps/id387771637.

Yahoo (2011). Yahoo open local platform api.

http://developer.yahoo.co.jp/webapi/map/.

Yano, M., Iwasaki, Y., and Kawaguchi, N. (2010). Ekilo-

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