Position Dependent Communication System

This thesis demonstrates, how a location-based service can be combined logically with speech technology, and what features this type of system might provide (in the thesis it is demonstrated, how a guided tour is made possible). Since the system communicates through speech and since this communication depends on a certain physical position, the system is called: Position Dependent Communication System (PDCS). The main functionality of the system is to guide a user along the shortest path from his/hers physical position to a certain destination, which is provided by speech. The system has a certain vocabulary relating to a number of meaningful positions in the building, which is used in the recognition of an input speech. If the speech is recognized, the system will respond to the user with a map showing the path in combination with a synthetic speech telling in which direction the user must go in order to reach the destination. As the physical position is updated every two seconds, the map and synthetic speech will be updated accordingly to this. The PDCS has been tested at the IT University, where the Ekahau Positioning Engine is running. The result of this testing has shown that it is possible to build a location-based service providing a guided tour with speech as input/output. Since the PDCS is a prototype of this heterogeneous system (using both speech and positioning technology), the program is kept open for improvements from both an application and system programmers point of view. This will be discussed throughout the report.