Drive Buddy

Abstract

Navigation systems to assist drivers and pedestrians have been in practice for a long time now. These systems allow users to provide their source and destination addresses and then suggest route(s) based on the user preferences. These routes could be in the form of directions on maps or audio instructions. A major difficulty faced by the users of these systems is the mapping of directions overlaid on a map to the real world scenes they view through their wind screen. To cater this issue, we have developed an Android based mobile application, the Drive Buddy, the exploits idea of augmented reality to provide driving directions to the users. The user is required to provide source and destination addresses via map and the application computes the shortest path to destination using the Google APis. During driving, user places the mobile device with its camera facing the road. The driving directions are then augmented on the road scenes as viewed through the camera. This requires no mapping and the instructions are directly viewed on real road scenes. The user may also opt to complement the augmented instructions with an audio output. In addition to an augmented navigation, the appHcation also allows users to update the status of traffic at a given location. This in turn allows other users to have traffic updates so that they can plan their routes accordingly