SILLITOE TRAIL: a Location-based
Mobile Experience
Application Domain
Edutainment Locative Experience
The Sillitoe Trail represents an example use of INSCAPE in the
areas of Locative Entertainment, Tourism and Education.
By locating traditional media (auditory and visual) at specific locations in the environment, the context within which the cultural artefacts are seen can be used to alter their perception by the viewer. Placing film footage and audio clips at relevant locations (for example, in the case of film where the scene was originally shot) adds an entirely new dimension to the capabilities of replay.
Story Outline
The Sillitoe Trail is an audio visual tour of the locations featured in the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, also featuring areas of general connection to Sillitoe himself (including the old Raleigh cycle factory where he worked, the site of which is now the Jubilee Campus of Nottingham University).
Sound bytes from the film and archive interviews with Sillitoe are played to the visitor through a headset as they cycle a specified route around Sillitoe’s old haunts. This media is triggered automatically via GPS or WiFi based location and a map showing both the current road layout, and as it was in the 50’s allows visitors to stay on-track whilst turning their mind back to a bygone era.
Individual and group activity will be monitored in real-time by an orchestrator running the INSCAPE stand-alone application. Events and messages related to a specific party’s activity will be sent both automatically (according to a set of predefined rules e. g. location and time up), or manually from the orchestration interface and will be delivered as text messages or audio (using a text-to-speech system to the appropriate subset of players).
Location-Based Authoring
The INSCAPE authoring environment contains three key aspects in relation to authoring a location-based experience. The Story Planner on the left allows real world locations to be documented with notes and photos along with links to map locations and media. The Stage Editor shows a map of the current area and allows proximity sensors to be specified that trigger media events when a user enters the area (during the event, the map shows a real-time display of the participants’ locations and allows an orchestrator to communicate with individuals and groups via text). Finally, on the right there is the EQUIP device and associated scripts that allow the experience in progress to be monitored and for the transmission and
reception of game events to and from the mobile devices. In order for players to have their positions tracked, and for their location to be incorporated into any event logic, it is required that that location of all players be on the same stage at the same time, there is only one map location and one stage (i. e. the world).
Route Layers
There are several layers of location that are of relevance to the author of a locative experience. These include the physical constraints of the location (with regards to the Sillitoe Trail, many hours of cycling around Nottingham were undertaken in order to find an appropriately safe, relevant and interesting route). Overlaid on this are other practical considerations (e. g. whether GPS/WiFi positioning is available) on top of that there are thematic or aesthetic considerations (where is the place to locate this piece of content? In what order do the media need to be played in, and so on).
The image on the left shows an early version of the Sillitoe Trail Route showing two such layers. The first layer is the historic map of the city (from the 1950s) – the bottom layer shows the currently proposed cycle route draw on a modern map of the city’s cycle paths – the middle shows a blend of the two.
War-Driving/Biking
War-driving is a technique used to detect local WiFi hotspots by driving around an area with a laptop on the passenger seat set to discover and record any access points in the vicinity. A similar method (using the target platform on a Nokia N95 mobile phone) was used to discover the WiFi
landscape of the proposed path, and to document the route using precise GPS recordings.
The image below shows the path as cycled and GPS data collected using Nokia’s Sportstracker. It is overlaid on a satellite map and historic map
using the GoogleEarth software. Again, the overlay of different landscape (physical and logical) is key in helping decide the best paths and where to locate media. When the locations have been selected there are specified using the INSCAPE software as proximity triggers and used to control the playback of the media on the mobile device.
N95 Local System
The software running on the N95 phones receives a filtered version of the exported ICML data from the inscape authoring tool. The important fields are those relating to the location of the proximity triggers and the associated media content. The N95 software communicates with a stand alone version of the experience (running as an orchestration tool) via the EQUIP interface. Should a failure to communicate with the EQUIP system occur, then the local software will continue to run (using either GPS of Wifi to ascertain its position) and will continue to play the relevant media to the player. In addition, if communication to the Equip server is available, then tracking/communication for orchestration and story logic purposes is possible and extra events and features are enabled based on group activity.
GPS Route MapHighlighted INSCAPE Features
In this scenario, we will be using many INSCAPE core features, most of them related to the Story Planner, Story Editor, Stage Editor and to using code snippets. The following capabilities will be specifically emphasised in this story:
Ease of location based authoring due to real world location documentation and media annotations in the Story Planner
Combining images, video and multiple zones in a single location based narrative
Setting up locations (proximity sensors) on map
Implementing story transitions through physical location in the real world
Orchestration interface to allow individual and group interactions
Two way communications between the user (position) and orchestrator (via EQUIP)
Allow story triggers based on individual and group locations
Allow tracking of multiple users on a single interface
Allow simultaneous asynchronous story replay for multiple users according to their locations
