A Location-Based Personal Task Management Application for Indoor and Outdoor Environments

Abstract

Personal task management has been essential for modern people, in order to remind them of something at a specific condition. Reminders based on the electronic calendar in cell phones are popular, but such reminders are mostly triggered by time. It is also common that some tasks are only meaningful to be performed at a specific location, so it would be useful if reminders for those tasks can be triggered only when the person to be reminded is physically near or located at that location. Therefore, in this research we implement a location-based personal task management application for Android-based smart phones and tablets. To distinguish our work from existing ones that rely solely on the GPS technology, we take advantage of the ubiquity of IEEE 802.11 WLAN (Wi-Fi) infrastructure to compliment the blind spots of GPS location sensing. Combining the two technologies make it possible for the personal task management application to be effective in both indoor and outdoor environments. Furthermore, as long as the WLAN infrastructure is available, this application can be further extended to be used in many other scenarios which comprise both indoor and outdoor environments, such as guiding in public transportation systems or tourist attractions.