Faculty team wins IT Innovation Challenge with advanced travel planner

A team of the Faculty of Economics and Business won the IT Innovation Challenge on Tuesday November 20th. The assignment consisted of building an advanced travel planner, which takes into account external factors like traffic jams or weather circumstances. "Our 'Tripper' is a complete solution; in the future all kinds of new information databases can be added", according to dr. Nick Szirbik, team captain and assistant professor of information systems. "Via the Ministry of Economics Affairs, interested companies will be approached."

The IT Innovation Challenge (ITIC) is a yearly, national competition for teams, organized by the Nederlands Architectuur Forum, the ANWB, SDU and NWO. Ten teams from companies and universities competed in the challenge last Tuesday.

More advanced

The winning traveler support system built by Szirbik's team is based on various tools that 'understand' external information sources like travel planners and weather forecasts, and that can 'translate' this to the travel information demand of the customer. With this new technology, every customer can have a software travel agent of his own, which not only reacts, but is proactive as well: "This system is far more advanced than the current planners, because it works with your up-to-date situation. Moreover, it will give direct advice, and might the situation change on the way", says the researcher. "It's kind of a personal travel advisor on -for example- your pda."

"You can imagine the system working like this: It happened to me twice that my train from Groningen to Schiphol Airport stranded in Meppel. The first time I found other travelers to Schiphol and we shared a taxi. But the second time, I found no-one, which made the taxi ride way more expensive. In this situation, my personal Tripper agent would look for fellow travelers immediately, bring us into contact and even call a taxi. Thus, the system dynamically looks for solutions with information it constantly monitors, like weather services, traffic channels, roadmaps etc."

'Agent technology'

In the IT Innovation Challenge, the researchers of the department of Business and ICT, used their expertise in the field of 'agent technology'. "An 'agent' is a tool standing in between mankind and various software systems. It's kind of a robot that mimics human behaviour by collecting, processing and combining information and translating this into an action", tells Szirbik. "The novelty consists of the fact that we put together different agents in one big 'society' in which they operate."

"We expect that a basic version of our Tripper can become operative within six months if a company is interested. The construction of an extensive (and endlessly expandable) version might take about two years. We do have ideas for the implementation and business plans available."

More information : Dr. N.B.Szirbik