Howdy!
For our Computer Science Capstone project we decided to spend the semester replacing the Texas A&M App by adding better bus route integration, Aggie Map information, and route planning all in your pocket. No matter how you've stumbled across this repository, we hope this app may make your day a little brighter on campus.
-Sean, Taha, Mahir, and Rory Class of ‘22
There is a current problem on some University campuses around the world, and that problem has to do with reliability of real-time information(RTI) of mapping systems for students/faculty on campus. Texas A&M is a prime example of a University that spent many hours mapping out every area of the school and putting it together into a web application. That web application is great in many ways, but its usefulness ends when someone is trying to navigate campus while on campus. "Aggie Map" as it is called, isn't optimized well for mobile devices and many of the features that you can access on your laptop, you are unable to access on your phone [2]. The Texas A&M Application for mobile devices makes this even worse by offering "Aggie Map" as a WebView window within the application which makes functionality limited, and makes the application run even slower. Students and faculty on campus want a way to access the information that they need in a pinch from their smartphone. Let's say that someone needs to find directions from one class to another using available bus routes. This functionality exists, but is mostly non-existent on mobile devices and I know for a fact that no one is walking around campus with their laptop out to get directions from one building to another. This is especially useful to gain access to real-time information on where the current buses are. One study we researched has concluded that "real-time information users say that their average wait time is 7.5 min versus 9.9 min for those using traditional arrival information, a difference of about 30%" [1]! Our proposed solution is to create a native mobile application that brings all of the great features of "Aggie Map" and some more mobile-centric features right into the pocket of your average Aggie. With this new application, users will have the ability to interact with a native mapping SDK on their device and gain access to real-time bus information with routes and current locations of the buses, as well as route planning from one location to another whether that be on or off campus. This would solve the problem of a lacking mobile experience as well as provide a better way for everyone to navigate both on campus and around the local Bryan/College Station area. Since the Texas A&M application already exists on mobile devices, conducting a quantitative study using Likert scales is the first primary way we plan on evaluating our product. We will then conduct statistical analysis in order to find out how well people rate the prior solution and our solution. Along with this, we will have other metrics such as how fast our application displays data compared to prior solutions and the number of features met compared to other solutions.This solution is one that will hopefully create a push for similar applications to be developed in the future for other localities, universities, and schools. A happier bus-rider could also contribute to more people taking the bus and therefore causing less emissions. We are keeping in mind all of these contributions as we continue with our proposal and design.
Our application was built entirely in native Android and written almost entirely in Java. In Android development, every area of the application has to be extended from some "Activity." An Activity is easy to use but when you want to switch to a different screen, you have to finish an Activity. This means that if you want to go back to where you just were, the Activity will have to be restarted and create itself from the start again. This is obviously slow, so we tried our best to design everything using Fragments.
A fragment can only be used if they are shown by an Activity, and they can last the entire life cycle of the application. We were able to design our entire application to be extended from a single Activity called "Main Activity" which allowed our app to be very snappy and quick.
The application is structured into four main Fragments, those fragments are the "Maps" fragment, the "Directions" fragment, the "Garage" Fragment, and the "Settings" fragment. The application is designed using a bottom bar which allows the user quickly and easily swap between the Maps, Direction, and Garage Fragments.
Let's break down each of these fragments. The app first opens into the Maps Fragment which is where most of the user interaction would be. This fragment will show the user the bus routes sheet and is where the bus routes will be displayed. It's also in charge of the plotting of Points of Interest on the map and showing the time table for a selected bus route.
The next fragment a user can select is the Directions Fragment. This fragment is where a user can input a source and destination to get directions from one place to another. When a source and destination are both inputted, it will show a line indicating a path on the map and will show a bottom sheet that has all of the necessary text directions to get from your source to your destination.
The user can then select the Garage Fragment which is pretty straightforward. Within this fragment a user can see the live parking garage counts of every parking garage on campus. It automatically refreshed and can also be forced to refresh.
The last fragment is the Settings fragment, this can be accessed by tapping the "cog" icon in the Search Bar of the Maps Fragment. Contained within are all of the settings to change the theme of the app and the styles of the map. It also gives you the capability to pre-load or update previously loaded bus routes. This will cut down on the amount of time it would take for a bus route to render on the map.
The only API key that you need access to is a standard Google API key. Just go to Google Cloud, create a new project, and enable APIs. You can learn more about that here,
After you have retrieved your API key, clone the project and open up your local.properties file. You will need to add a new line containing:
MAPS_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
Check out the Contributing Guidelines
- OKatrych's RightSheetBehavior
- Decorator for RecyclerViews
- Search Component
- PermissionX
- Spotlight
- Expandable Bottom Bar
- AppIntro
[1] Kari Edison Watkins, Brian Ferris, Alan Borning, G Scott Rutherford, and David Layton. 2011. Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real-timeinformation on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders.Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice45, 8 (2011), 839–848.
[2] [n.d.]. Aggie Maps Texas A&M University. https://aggiemap.tamu.edu/map/d.