Genesis: An Approach to Data Dissemination in Advanced Traveler Information Systems

Genesis and ATIS are being developed under the umbrella of the Intelligent Transportation Systems to facilitate various kinds of travel, including daily commuting to work via private/public transportation and visiting new places and points of attraction. Travelers are naturally mobile, and the most eeective way to disseminate information to travelers is with wireless communications, which is being explored in the Genesis project in Minnesota. The travelers can use personal communication devices including pagers and portable computers (e.g. Apple Newton) to avail themselves of the ATIS services provided by Genesis. This extended abstract presents an overview of the goals and preliminary design of Genesis, illustrating the data-dissemination needs of ATIS. This paper describes the application domain rather than evaluating candidate solutions.