MobileMonday Global

^{Public tranportation goes to mobile phones in Helsinki and Oulu} How late is that bus going to be?

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a mobile guide for city travellers in public transport. The service delivers real-time information on buses or trams to mobile phones. The Mobile Guide for City Traveller (KAMO) is a new mobile application that offers journey planning and stop-specific timetable information.

Passengers can follow the route stop by stop during the trip and select an alarm from the mobile guide before the destination stop.

Passengers can also pay their fare via the application and save journey details for later use with this application.

KAMO users can track the progress of any buses, trams or underground trains included in real-time positioning-based monitoring. The service also enables journey planning and tracking the planned route via mobile phone. Travel news concerning problems or changes to public transport is also available via the KAMO application.

NFC, RFID

The mobile service developed by VTT is based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Once loaded into the mobile phone, KAMO can be accessed using the phone's menu.

RFID remote reading – featured by Nokia's 6131 NFC model, for example – enhances the speed of usage. Touching the RFID tag with a mobile phone opens the application on the phone's display without the user having to access it separately via the menu.

Tags can be used for mobile travel ticket purchases or accessing stop-specific timetable information. As NFC phones are not yet widely used, the application also works on Nokia's other S40 and S60 models.

A platform for future services

The service is designed to serve both city travellers using public transport regularly and casual passengers such as tourists. To date, the application is available in the Helsinki and Oulu regions, but can be expanded to cover other cities and towns. The number of vehicles sporting GPS positioning, howerr, is very limited.

The service can also be enhanced with a range of additional services such as providing information on local events, news reports or location-based advertisements. In future users will be able to tailor the KAMO application to offer information only on certain routes or additional services selected.

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