Ringing In The Rain
Chaochi Chang, Jae-woo Chung

People's daily lives are impacted by lots of dynamic environmental information, such as weather and traffic. Though most of this information is available on the Internet now, there is no easy way for someone to access that kind of information while in a mobile state. In addition, people do not need to know this kind of information all the time unless there is some significant change that may impact their current or future activities.

Ringing In The Rain proposes creating a distributed multi-agent architecture that uses GPS-enabled cell phones to build a mobile service development framework? The goal of this framework is to build mobile services to deliver timely changes in environmental information that could impact a user's current or future activities.

In many countries, the population of bicycle riders has surged during the past few years for various reasons, such as the cost of gas, traffic control regulation, health issues, and leisure. Regardless of the reason people ride bicycles, one of the most frustrating things for them is being caught in rain that they could have avoided by taking a detour, if they had known they were heading toward a storm beforehand as Figure 1 illustrated.

This frustration leads to a bigger and more general issue: is there any prompt and precise way to offer people information which may impact their current or future activities while they are in a state of mobility with limited information accessibility?

To solve the aforementioned problem, offering people information may impact their current and future activities promptly and precisely while they are in a mobile state with limited information accessibility, Ringing In The Rain plans to combine the distributed multi-agent architecture with GPS-enabled cell phones to create an application framework that enables the creation of various mobile services delivering such information at the right time and place.