GPS hiker travel guide

Abstract

On the late April of 2003, Hong Kong suffered from the attack of SARS disease and many people dead in the battle. Hong Kong citizens start to realize the importance of health that can be brought by outdoor activities especially hiking. More and more people participle hiking in weekend instead of shopping on the street. However, these hiking beginners may feel difficult in the activity. There are quite a lot of important techniques in hiking especially navigation skill. In the past, map and compass were being used to navigate in countryside. But this method is relatively inconvenient and inaccurate. It also requires user’s basic knowledge in countryside landform. Under these limitations, electronic hiker guide is proposed to meet the user’s requirement. Palm is chosen to be the most suitable device for hiker e-guide out of pocket PC, GPS device and smart phone. Palm got advantage on the user friendly interface, popularity, mobility and flexibility over all other competitors. That’s the reason of why it is chosen. Another important element in this project is GPS technology. It is a satellite-based navigation system made up of a network of 24 satellites. With the connection of GPS receiver, the palm can get its current position information includin g latitude, longitude and altitude. Hiker E- guide will make corresponding calculations on these parameters and provide graphical representation/ information to users. This project is aiming at integrating the GPS system on a portable device and hiding the complexity behind. It achieves this by providing a user interface which is ease of use under the user interface guideline of palm. To improve such a new navigation system accuracy and functionality, several algorithms are being used to take care of the distance calculation on the round earth and shortest path searching.