Self-Tour Service Technology based on a Smartphone

With the immergence of the iPhone, the interest in Smartphones is getting higher as services can be provided directly between service providers and consumers without the network operators. As the number of international tourists increase, individual tourists are also increasing. According to the WTO's (World Tourism Organization) prediction, the number of international tourists will be 1.56 billion in 2020,and the average growth rate will be 4.1% a year. Chinese tourists, in particular, are increasing rapidly and about 100 million will travel the world in 2020. In 2009, about 7.8 million foreign tourists visited Korea and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is trying to attract 12 million foreign tourists in 2014. A research institute carried out a survey targeting foreign tourists and the survey results showed that they felt uncomfortable with communication (about 55.8%) and directional signs (about 21.4%) when they traveled in Korea. To solve this inconvenience for foreign tourists, multilingual servicesfor traffic signs, tour information, shopping information and so forth should be enhanced. The appearance of the Smartphone comes just in time to provide a new service to address these inconveniences. Smartphones are especially useful because every Smartphone has GPS (Global Positioning System) that can provide users' location to the system, making it possible to provide location-based services. For improvement of tourists' convenience, Seoul Metropolitan Government hasinitiated the u-tour service using Kiosks and Smartphones, and several Province Governments have started the u-tourpia project using RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) and an exclusive device. Even though the u-tour or u-tourpia service used the Smartphone and RFID, the tourist should know the location of the Kiosks and have previous information. So, this service did not give the solution yet. In this paper, I developed a new convenient service which can provide location based information for the individual tourists using GPS, WiFi, and 3G. The service was tested at Insa-dong in Seoul, and the service can provide tour information around the tourist using a push service without user selection. This self-tour service is designed for providing a travel guide service for foreign travelers from the airport to their destination and information about tourist attractions. The system reduced information traffic by constraining receipt of information to tourist themes and locations within a 20m or 40m radius of the device. In this case, service providers can provide targeted, just-in-time services to special customers by sending desired information. For evaluating the implemented system, the contents of 40 gift shops and traditional restaurants in Insa-dong are stored in the CMS (Content Management System). The service program shows a map displaying the current location of the tourist and displays a circle which shows the range to get the tourist information. If there is information for the tourist within range, the information viewer is activated. If there is only a single resultto display, the information viewer pops up directly, and if there are several results, the viewer shows a list of the contents and the user can choose content manually. As aresult, the proposed system can provide location-based tourist information to tourists without previous knowledge of the area. Currently, the GPS has a margin of error (about 10~20m) and this leads the location and information errors. However, because our Government is planning to provide DGPS (Differential GPS) information by DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) this error will be reduced to within 1m.

스마트 폰 기반 Self-Tour 서비스 기술 연구

아이폰의 등장과 함께 스마트 폰에 대한 관심이 높아지고, 통신사업자를 통해야만 가능했던 다양한 서비스가 스마트 폰을 통해서 직접 제공할 수 있는 환경이 가능해졌다. 전세계적으로 해외 관광객이 증가하면서 관광가이드 없이 자신의 노력으로 여행을 다니는 개인관광객도 증가하고 있다. 그러나 우리나라를 방문하는 외국인들이 개인적으로 여행을 즐기기에는 언어소통이나 제공되는 정보의 부족으로 어려움을 느끼고 있다. 본 연구에서는 스마트 폰이 탑재하고 있는 GPS와 WiFi 또는 3G 무선망을 통해서 사전에 설정된 관광 정보 카테고리에 따라서 관광객의 위치에 따른 관련 정보를 자동으로 제공함으로써 관광객의 편의성을 높이는 서비스 기술을 개발하였다. 개발된 서비스는 인사동을 대상으로 시험하였으며, 사용자의 선택과 같은 불편함 없이 주변정보를 제공함으로써 관광에 대한 편의성을 최대한 높였다.