Assisting Multimodal Travelers: Design and Prototypical Implementation of a Personal Travel Companion

Increasing the share of multimodal journeys is becoming more and more urgent in our society in order to guarantee a high level of mobility in the long term. While car drivers are already assisted by advanced guidance and navigation facilities, continuous on-trip assistance for multimodal travelers is still in its infancy. Especially when it comes to situations of modal change, travelers get discouraged by the increased complexity and the lack of adequate information and guidance. Thus, the goal of our research over the past three years has been to integrate existing information systems and to design and implement the prototype of a digital personal travel companion for multimodal travelers. This paper discusses typical travel situations and possible barriers for people traveling on multimodal journeys. To address these challenges, functional requirements for a personal travel companion are derived from the analysis of the situations. The main sections of this paper describe our results focusing on personalized multimodal journey planning, mobile multimodal trip management, and smart-phone-based pedestrian orientation and guidance in complex public transport transfer buildings