WO2007134508A1

WO2007134508A1 - Intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system

Info

Publication number: WO2007134508A1
Application number: PCT/CN2007/000494
Authority: WO
Inventors: Shu Tak Raymond Lee
Original assignee: Shu Tak Raymond Lee
Priority date: 2006-05-19
Filing date: 2007-02-13
Publication date: 2007-11-29
Also published as: CN101075395A; HK1090514A2

Abstract

An intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system, which may be applied on handheld devices, comprising client device, location agents and information server; Said client device comprising handheld device, location device and system modules configured in said handheld device, to display the data received by said location device on said handheld device; Said location agent is to perform information exchange between said client device and said information server, and to return the location-aware tourist information to said client device base on the latest data; and, Said information server, acts as a communication platform and the knowledge-base with tourist ontology, allows said location agents transmit and receive information via Internet. The present invention also disclosed an intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding method. The benefit of implementing the present invention is that location-aware information may be provided to the tourists conveniently by the handheld device at anytime, anyplace.

Description

INTELLIGENT ONTOLOGY AGENT-BASED TOURIST GUIDING SYSTEM

Technical field

[0001] The present invention relates to communication technology, more particularly, relates to an intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system. Background of the invention

[0002] With the growth of global travel industry, there are increasing number of tourists (so-called "FreeWalker" or "Backpacker") who prefer to travel on their own with backpacks, guidebooks and maps. However, traveling in foreign countries, especially with foreign languages, these backpackers will easily get lost or miss some attractions and restaurants. So, it is necessary to develop a system which can help these travelers, to locate their own position automatically, access the latest travel and tourist related information according to their geographic information at anytime and in anywhere. Further, since the wireless devices on market, i.e. PocketPC, PDA, mobile phones, these devices are small in size, light in weight, and long run time. Therefore, the present invention employs such devices to develop a system that provides the tourists with various real-time positioning and tourist information. Brief description of the invention

[0003] The objective of the present invention is to solve the problem in the prior art that when tourists are travelling in foreign countries, it is inconvenient to search for tourist related information. The present invention provides an intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system, applied on handheld devices to provide the tourists with real-time tourists' information conveniently. The present invention integrates state-of-art AI technology (such as Fuzzy Logic) with Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT), Positioning technologies (GPS, MPS and WPS) and Agent Ontology Technology for the provision of an intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding and information system. [0004] The technical solution of the present invention to solve the problem in the prior art is to provide an intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system, which may be applied on handheld devices, comprising client device, location agent and information server;

[0005] Said client device comprising handheld device, location device and system modules configured in said handheld device, to display the data received by said location device on said handheld device;

[0006] Said location agent is to perform information exchange between said client device and said information server, and to return the real-time location-aware tourist information to said client device base on the latest data; and,

[0007] Said information server, acts as a communication platform and the knowledge-base with tourist ontology, allows said location agent transmit and receive information via Internet.

[0008] Advantageously, the system module of said client device comprising: location module, query module, user interface module and fuzzy search module,.

[0009] Said location module extracts location information according to user's current region;

[0010] Said query module processes in said information server, searches for location-aware tourist information according to the location information sent by said location agent;

[0011] Said user interface module is used to provide a visible display on said client device; and,

[0012] Fuzzy search module helps user to obtain uncertain and personalized searching results with fuzzy logic technology.

[0013] Advantageously, said location module comprises positioning engine, location engine and map engine that helps user to indicate current location.

[0014] Advantageously, said location module is bound on said handheld device or attached to said handheld device. [0015] Advantageously, said positioning agents comprises GPS agent, MPS agent (such as 3 G positioning agent) and WPS agent (such as WiFi positioning agent) for both indoor and outdoor positioning.

[0016] An intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding method, comprising:

[0017] Step 1, request positioning according to the user's location-aware information, and display said location-aware information on the user interface of said client device;

[0018] Step 2, send said location-aware information to said information server, and said server return the results to said client device, then display said results on the user interface of said client device.

[0019] Advantageously, said step 2 further comprises: search for the location-aware information of a known location, and return said location-aware information to said client device, according to the location-aware information sent by the positioning agent.

[0020] Advantageously, said searching of the location-aware information of a known location employs fuzzy logic searching method.

[0021] Advantageously, said positioning agents comprises GPS agent, MPS agent (such as 3 G positioning agent) and WPS agent (such as WiFi positioning agent) for both indoor and outdoor positioning.

[0022] Advantageously, display said location-aware information on said user interface in terms of a map, and display said location-aware information on said user interface in ontology-based tree-type menu.

[0023] The benefit of implementing the present invention is that location-aware information may be provided to the tourists conveniently by the handheld device at any time.

Brief description of the drawings

[0024] Figure 1 is the system structure diagram of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system.

[0025] Figure 2 is the data flow block diagram of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system.

[0026] Figure 3 is the schematic diagram of the location-aware information definition of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system.

[0027] Figure 4 is schematic diagram 1 of the user interface of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system.

[0028] Figure 5 is schematic diagram 2 of the user interface of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system.

Detail description of the invention

[0029] The objective of the present invention is to provide the tourists with more convenient and intelligent real-time location-aware information searches. The integration of 4 core technical solutions is provided.

[0030] Positioning technology: comprising Global Positioning System (GPS) and Mobile Positioning System (MPS) such as 3G positioning for outdoor positioning, and Wireless Positioning System (WPS) such as WiFi Positioning for indoor positioning.

[0031] Said positioning service is determining the real-time geographical location of the mobile user with the integration of wireless terminal and wireless network., thus to provide the location-based information required by the user. The positioning, services may vary according to the positioning technology. For example, information services based on position (Search for the nearest restaurants, museums and entertainment information, yellow page etc.).

[0032] Semantic Web Technology: enabling the sharing and reuse of knowledge, and to apply said technology in developing tourist guiding information.

World Wide Web ("Web" in short) is the most important and broadest Internet application, with Web, user can browse all the information sources on the Internet.

However, the limitations of the WWW are: (1) Computers can not understand the semantics on the websites; (2) When searching for information on the Internet, even with powerful search engines, the accuracy is quite low. While searching for piles of associated websites, lots of unnecessary and unrelated information are found therein.

[0033] Therefore, in order to allow people to express the requirements according to the semantics of the contents to filter out the contents of interest from thousands of websites rapidly and exactly, meanwhile, to make the computer understand the semanteme of the websites. "Semantic WWW" is a global information network that may link the "words" which may express the contents of the websites; in another word, it is a global database linked by a method may be easily understood and processed by machines.

[0034] The advantage of semantic Web (or what we called "Web Ontology") is that it allows the computer to intelligently organize and understand all the data stored on Internet effectively. In this way, computers may understand the meanings of information like human-beings, thus to achieve the function of intelligent agent technology. The results provided by the semantic Web search engine are more accurate than traditional Web systems.

[0035] Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology comprising fuzzy logic system for positioning to the location-aware information (for example, travelling, entertainment and restaurants): Since fuzzy algorithm may express the uncertainty with in things themselves, therefore, it may simulate the inaccurate, non-linear information processing capability of the brain of a human-being when the realizing the world.

[0036] Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT) is used to search for the latest travelling information, traffic information and other useful information for travellers on a particular location. Intelligent agents are programs with names that may migrate freely from one host to another host in isomorphic or isomerous networks with built-in intelligent. Such programs (so-called "agents" may autonomously decide when to migrate to a place. It may hold itself at any point when the program is running, and migrate to another host, and then continue to run the program at this point. When applying intelligent agents in the present invention, dynamic migration between hosts may be realized, thus to transfer program to data instead of the conventional method that transfer data to program to calculate; further, it is intelligent, platform independent, agile distribution, low network data stream and cooperative.

[0037] The detail description of the 4 core technical solutions of the present invention are described as follows. Referring to figure 1, the system structure diagram of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system, and integrating figure 2, the data flow block diagram of the intelligent ontology agent-based tourist gμiding system. The intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system comprises 3 main components: client device, positioning agents and information server.

[0038] Client device: comprising a handheld device (i.e. pocket PC/PDA) and positioning device (bound on said handheld device or as a peripheral of said handheld device), for example, WPS receiver (such as WiFi receiver), MPS receiver or GPS receiver, said 3 types of receiver are used to receive GPS, wireless and mobile signal data for positioning. As a guiding system of a tourist, it is important to display the said data on said handheld device. Further, for a better tourist guiding and leading function, the present invention may display the real-time street map and tourist related information on the handheld device (via said 3G network). Said handheld device may also display various travelling information to the user, for example, point of interests (POIs), restaurants and hotels etc.

[0039] The client device comprises 4 system modules: positioning module, query module, user interface module and fuzzy search module (as shown in figure 2). [0040] Positioning agent: comprising positioning engine, location engine and map engine for helping user to indicate the his/her current location. The present invention extracts location-aware information according to region. However, user can not get the local travelling information only by positioning. Different parts of a region must be predefined. For simple query processes, the present invention search for all the travelling information of the whole region according to the user's current location.

[0041] Query module processes in the information server. Based on the latest GPS/MPS/WPS messages sent by positioning agents, said query module search for the travelling information of known location, for example, restaurants, POIs and hotels. While applying the intelligent ontology agent-based agent and semantic Web technology, the present invention helps the user to classify all the travelling information. The mobility of intelligent agents can easily send the travelling information of the whole region from the information server to the client device. [0042] For example, in one embodiment of the present invention, the

[0043] User interface module provides a visible display interface at client device. Said user interface module provides 3 functions: route guidance, ontology tree-based menu and questionnaire-like form (as shown in figure 4 and 5). Route guidance helps the user to locate his/her current position, and the POIs by representing some graphical remarks in the map, i.e. drawing a red line to show the user where he/she has passed and a orange box indicate the point of interest such as the restaurants, hotels and landmarks, etc. By adopting the ontology context modeling of tourist domain, tree-based menu provides an ideal design for user to browse the categorized tourist information as well as explicit information including telephone, address, opening hours, expenditure etc. Moreover, AI technology such as fuzzy logics is used to support intelligent searching (so-called "fuzzy search") as described in the next module.

[0044] Fuzzy Search Module is the state-of-art AI technology - Fuzzy Logic that helps user to obtain uncertain and personalized searching results. For example, based on the current location and budget of travel, the fuzzy set membership function helps user to provide the reasonably close and cheap price restaurant information. To calculate the shortest distance between two points on the earth, the Great-Circle-Distance technology is user to calculate and define the search area. Such distance is obtained by calculating the shortest distance between any two points on the surface of a sphere measured along a path on the surface of the sphere (as opposed to going through the sphere's interior). Since the Earth is approximately spherical, the equations for great-circle-distance are important for finding the shortest distance between points of the surface of the Earth. In addition, spherical geometry is rather different from ordinary Euclidean geometry, the equations for distance take a different form. The distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of a straight line from one point to the other. [0045] The GPS Agent, MPS Agent and WPS Agent are the core mobile positioning agents that can freely migrate from one host to another. It can migrate from a remote Tourist Information Centre to the FreeWalker Client (end-user handheld device). By supporting a high degree of autonomy, these positioning agents can freely migrate across the Internet (e.g. via 3G or GPRS technology) to bring the latest GPS/MPS/WPS information, with the goal to perform the information exchange between the client and the tourist information centre. After the Positioning Agents return to client, the user is able to access the location-aware tourist information. Besides using the Location Server to report the current location, the user client can locate his/her position based on the "nearby" positioning agents in the current location (especially in case of heavy Internet traffics), which provide a new age of Internet data exchange mechanism by using Agent Technology as compared with traditional client-server technology.

[0046] The Tourist Information Centre is a typical IATOPIA™ Server, which acts as a communication platform and the knowledge-base with tourist ontology. IATOPIA™ Server allows mobile agents to be sent and received through network. For instance, the Positioning Agents get the latest GPS/MPS/WPS data, then it retrieve the categorized tourist information back to client.

[0047] While the present invention has been described with reference to certain embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes may be made and equivalents may be substituted without departing from the scope of the present invention. In addition, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situation or material to the teachings of the present invention without departing from its scope. Therefore, it is intended that the present invention not be limited to the particular embodiment disclosed, but that the present invention will include all embodiments falling within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

1. An intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding system, which may be applied on handheld devices, comprising client device, location agent and information server;

Said client device comprising handheld device, location device and system modules configured in said handheld device, to display the data received by said location device on said handheld device;

Said location agent is to perform information exchange between said client device and said information server, and to return the location-aware tourist information to said client device base on the latest data; and,

Said information server, acts as a communication platform and the knowledge-base with tourist ontology, allows said location agent transmit and receive information via Internet.

2. The system in claim 1, the system module of said client device comprising: location module, query module, user interface module and fuzzy search module, Said location module extracts location information according to user's current region;

Said query module processes in said information server, searches for real-time location-aware tourist information according to the location information sent by said location agent;

Said user interface module is used to provide a visible display on said client device; and,

Fuzzy search module helps user to obtain uncertain and personalized searching results with fuzzy logic.

3. The system in claim 2, said location module comprises positioning engine, location engine and map engine that helps user to indicate current location.

4. The system in claim 1 , said location module is bound on said handheld device or attached to said handheld device.

5. The system in claim 1, said positioning agent comprises GPS agent, MPS agent and WPS agent.

6. An intelligent ontology agent-based tourist guiding method, comprising:

Step 1, request positioning according to the user's location-aware information, and display said location-aware information on the user interface of said client device; Step 2, send said location-aware information to said information server, and said server return the results to said client device, then display said results on the user interface of said client device.

7. The method in claim 6, said step 2 further comprises: search for the location-aware information of a known location, and return said location-aware information to said client device, according to the location-aware information sent by the positioning agent.

8. The method in claim 6 or 7, said searching of the location-aware information of a known location employs fuzzy logic searching method.

9. The method in claim 7, said positioning agent comprises GPS agent, MPS agent and WPS agent.

10. The method in claim 7, display said location-aware information on said user interface in terms of a map, and display said location-aware information on said user interface in ontology-based tree-type menu.