Customer location services

Customer location services enable travellers to conveniently specify their trip starting point, select and locate their destination, and acquire easy-to-use instructions on how to travel to their destination. Advances in hardware, software/databases, and communication systems will dramatically affect the way we travel, whether in an unfamiliar city or own home town. The traditional IVHS concepts for providing such information have concentrated on the in-vehicle systems. Today, the new technologies invite a broader spectrum of possibilities including: enhanced telephone directory services; personal digital assistants and personal computers with network link or wireless communication, and online services. Together these will create the new services, “customer location services (CLS)”, to assist the traveller. This paper describes the nature of these emerging services and the technological requirements for their implementation