This is just a experiment in using this page to for beta tester information. It is still under development!!
As a beta tester for the Guide My Trip virtual travel guide, you can download the app from either the App Store or Google Play by searching for ”Guide My Trip.”
After downloading, start the app and the following screen is displayed.
The guide page consisist of five different areas as described above.
The configuration area allows you to configure some important aspects of the app.
The three lines in the configuration area brings up a menu where you can choose filters for the information you receive. You can select groups of interesting places or individual types within each group. The filter types are grouped. You can select groups of interesting places or individual types within each group. The image below does not show all possible groups or types of filters.
You can also choose your preferred language, with Swedish and English currently available. Additional languages will be added in the future.
You close this screen by clicking in main area, the new filter and language settings are then set in operation.
The symbol on the right-hand side can have two different appearances. If the symbol does not have a line through it, the app will send your GPS position to the backend server, which will then provide information about the filtered types of places in in front of your. If the symbol is crossed over, the app will not send any GPS positions and you can only converse with the guide about the most recent place.
When the GPS position is sent, you will see the position, your speed and direction at the bottom of the screen in the status messages area.
The conversation area just below the configuration area allows you to see the text of the guide’s responses and your voice input, which will be translated into text.
The middle section of the screen, between the conversation area and the speak button, is used to display commercial or informational messages.
You can interact with the app using voice commands by speaking. The large microphone at the bottom of the screen can be pressed to initiate voice input.
The guide will prompt you with a beep when it is ready to listen to you. It translates your voice to text (during about 4 seconds) and sends the message to the backend server.
After each return message received from the backend, it will beep on you enabling you to ask questions about the latest found place or start different types of conversations.
If you did not have time to speak between the beeps, you can push the large microphone at the bottom of the screen.
What can you do with the app after you have started the GPS location sending?
When the app is listening, you can start different types of conversations. You can ask the guide for:
- More interesting places in front of you, according to your filter settings
- If you are hungry, you can ask the guide for the closest food place, by saying food or i am hungry
- If you did not like that food place, just ask for any other food places closeby
- You can also ask if the place is open.
Other things you can ask the guide are:
- Where am I – and the guide will tell you information about your current position
- Help – and the guide will give you some of this information, and just ask help again and it will give you more information
- Repeat – and the guide will repeat the last information
- Ask it a about a place – by saying something like ”Tell me about Växjö”
- If that place was found, you can ask the guide for more information or history about the place
Important issues to know about the guide:
When you move around the guide does not know where you are heading. It then estimates where you are heading based on your speed and direction.
The guide creates a corridor around the route it estimates your will be travelling. The corridor limits the size of the area for the search of your filtered place types.
Sometimes the road turns quickly, and that estimation might be wrong and the guide will not pick up on the correct places in front of you.
If you are not moving (less than 15 meters) no GPS will be sent.
It’s important to note that the guide is currently only optimized for travel by car. Work is in progress to add moving around by bike or walking.
The speed you are travelling at and the frequency of updates of your position affects the accuracy of the estimations of where you are going, so sometimes it will not be correct. Update frequency is right now 30 seconds.
The round-trip time for the GPS to be sent and getting the results back from the backend affects how timely the response will be. The backend adapts the corridor calculation based on predictions of the rounds trip time.
Please send any suggestions, comments, or issues to guidemytrip@minnovate.se. Thank you for your participation as a beta tester!
Just testing if this works
OK