Real Time Reliability: Mixed Reality Public Transportation

Being aware of how users of public transportation are frustrated with unreliable transportation and uncertainty of arrival times, we use mixed reality technology to leverage new and more accurate public transportation tracking systems. Our system gathers position updates from a standard SIRI XML interface and relays optimized updates to mobile clients based on potential visibility and extrapolated state using compact protocols over wireless networks. Our mobile clients visualize tracked vehicles within a 3D city map or directly on top of a camera feed as augmented reality. The user can select the type of visualization. Switching modes is done smoothly, maintaining the current interaction paradigm. Vehicle positions are mapped to OpenStreetMap to keep them aligned to the road network and to facilitate a realistic behavior.

Antti Nurminen
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology,
Aalto University Finland