Slashdot Mirror
Using GPS to Hail Cabs
The Benefactor writes "The guys at The
Register are running a story about using
mobile phones to hail cabs in London. Using GPS technology to locate the nearest available cab and to direct it to where you call from this should make frantic arm waving to get their attention a thing of the past."
They're using GSM-based location-services that many cellphone-providers across europe are starting to provide. GSM is the european standard for digital cellphones, and you can't get an exact position, only tell which base station the caller is connected to. Therefore you can find people in the same area by matching which base-station sees which users.
Harald
It's been decades since the London fog was so bad that you would need GPS to flag down a cab. They can see you on the streets. You're the tourist dressed wearing the Princess Di T-shirt with an overpriced camera around your neck jumping and waving frantically.
A GPS signal might help them find you when you can't tell them where you are, which, for most non-Londoners (and many residents), is quite common, but it ain't about to replace flagging down the cab that you can see driving down the street.
This is something I could never figure out in London. When I asked the concierge at the hotel to call me a cab, he/she either called a so-called minicab (usually something looking sleazy and semi-legal; never having any real meter) or informed me, that the black cabs are "just around the corner" and calling them by phone is "not possible". Tried it in many hotels, going to many destinations. I wonder what they will say now: "do you have your GPS with you, sir?"
You really should remember that before you push the call button, that you have your Hitchhiker's Guide with you! And keep in mind that you can't find Babelfish just anywhere...
Whew! This water sure is cold!
ahhh yes...good to see that technology is enabling us to take every bit of exercise out of our lives :)
All you need now is a Segway to haul your ass to the cab you didn't have to wave your arm to hail!
Here at UCSD there is a project going on to use GPS and 802.11b access points to make all busses aware of where the others are and predict wait times and improve efficiency. We have working prototypes but not all of the kinks have been worked out. It's a promising technology though.
There are literaly thousands of cabs driving around, i never have to wait more than a couple of seconds before i am in a black cab.
This seems like a waste of time to me and another way to pay off the londons congestion charge (look it up americans and quiver)
On the other hand if they could tie this into some sort of escort service and have loverly young ladies delivered to your location then by all means bring it on.
Akira
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
A black man still can't get a cab!
No one cares about the right to privacy of cab drivers.
It's very clever, and the first commercial use of Mobile Phone location technology (in the UK, at least). However, the problem is cab drivers just don't want to know.
The original plan was to get 4000 drivers on board by the end of March. Apparently they are still around the 500 mark which means the revenue stream is not as healthy as they would like!
Grand Theft Auto III, anyone? :)
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Your average consumer is going have 5 or 6 cabs pass them by the time they figure out how the damn thing is going to work.
Plus, once you find the cab, you then have to dig out the phone number.
My experience with Cabs is that you are either 1 block from a main road they frequent, or so far out in the sprawl that you just call the least seedy one in the phone book.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Every Londener knows that trhe worlds most efficient intelligence network is the london taxi drivers. they all have what is known as "The knowledge". This sinister sounding piece of mental conditioning is actually a requirement before the driver gets a taxi licence.
Now we're giving this sinister shady organisation access to more technology to control our lives. Not only do they aspire to contain all knowledge, but they also want to knwo where each and every one of us is at any time.
Fortunately we have resistance. The London Underground is fighting against these evil beings. The LU provides a service that prevents mobiles from being used in this way.
Is this really a problem? I've never been to London, but any city I have been to, the cabs were almost frantic to pull over and let you in. In New York, I've had cabbies pull over and ask if I wanted a ride when I was just standing there.
This seems like a solution waiting for a problem...
--trb
Then, punters are automatically connected to an available cab driver in their area before the prospective passenger tells the cabbie exactly where they are.
So, the passenger tells the cabbie where they are?
I would prefer a cabbie who is able to figure that out on his own...
I'm all for utilizing technology to simplify and improve our quality of life, but come on. Walk your ass out to the curb and raise your arm over your head. If you rather spend 10 minutes fucking around with your GPS just so you can find the 2 cabbies who are geeky enough to use it, have fun. More power to you. But as far as I'm concerned, it's the equivalent of coding 10,000 lines just to produce "Hello, World".
Just keep me posted when the hookers start using this technology - then you'll see some jumping up and down and arm flailing on my part.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
When you stumble out of a club with your "crew" it is quite fun calling a cab company and trying to remember where it is your going so you can tell them... Then as you wait for your cab to get there, you can hang out and take pictures and such. When the cab does make it there you can wave your hands, jump in that puppy and have even more fun, maybe you'll even find out your cab drivers name is Fuzzy. Once you make it back to the hotel you can watch an amazing animal planet where crocidiles and cheetahs battle each other. :-)
Anyway, that's how it worked this weekend in Champaign IL after the Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival (13 conversations and Sometimes Charlotte were awesome!) You just have to check out the Highdive dance club, that's where we were getting a cab from after they closed for the night (checkout the 3d virtual tours to get an idea how pimporific the place is.)
What I'm trying to say is that drunken tasks are sometime hillarious, and technology might make it too easy
Dude. Michael's been a Slashdot editor forever. Where have you been?
The citizens of London have begun testing the new "Scrotox" technology. Gps satellites will now scratch their balls when necessary. Could this be the end of frantic ball scratching throughout London? Only time will tell.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
I don't know why you write the way you do, but I love you nonetheless. I've even written a journal about you.
Of course that's not the real problem. At least here in DC, I play a constant game of hopping in and out of cabs until I find a driver willing to take me to my neighborhood. It's not tough at all to hail a cab while you're downtown, the problem is finding a driver who is willing to take you to a neighborhood that he considers dangerous (or at least unlikely to result in a return fare). You can get that cab downtown/in the tourist areas real easy - but just watch how fast he'll work to get you out of his cab if it turns out he doesn't want to drive where you've asked him to take you. What we could really use is a system that not only tells a driver where you are but lets him know in advance where you'd like to go. Then I wouldn't have to spend a half-hour boucing in and out of cabs until I find a driver willing to take me home.
It's stuff like this that, while completely offtopic, keeps me coming back to /. Thank you.
It's michael. Instead of dropping it and letting it go like a man, he holds onto the site and acts like a fucking child.
Don't get me wrong. I know Seth's whacked right out of his skull, man. He ain't never comin' back. Total fucking git.
They're both nutcases, but michaels a total fucking censorship fascist hypocritical ass.
This will be great if it comes to the states. I'd love to see the drunken rabble at around 2AM in major cities trying to figure out how to operate these things when they can barely figure out how to operate their arms at that time.
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
considering the volume of traffic on the Internet, usenet, etc. your post won't be read in 10 days much less 1000 years.
Where this would be useful, IMHO, is if your company had an account with Zingo and you could hail it knowing that you didn't actually have to foot the bill yourself (rather than wait for a CabCharge one). Sadly, they don't actually do corporate accounts, so I still can't see why you'd want it.
Their FAQ is pushing the ability to get one at night, or when it's raining, without having to stand outside, which is fair enough, I guess. If you're a jessie.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
...is if GPS then tracks the cab to ensure American tourists aren't taken from Heathrow to central London via Slough.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
...we can put in our dating preferences in some GPS dating service and find the nearest single young brunette who likes to, say, be smitten on the buttocks? ;)
In London, only the licensed black cabs are permitted to to pick up passengers who hail them on the street. But there are also armies of more-or-less-dodgy minicab operators who work on the basis that the car is pre-ordered, by the customer calling the minicab company's office, who dispatch a car to you by radio.
This new system sounds like it would be ideal for the minicab operators, because a punter calling in and using this service is in effect ordering the car as opposed to hailing it on the street, yet the turnaround time should be a lot quicker.
The black cab drivers are going to hate this...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2946129.stm
The taxi industry is so over-regulated in London that there is a shortage of taxi drivers. Most other cities have the opposite problem. It is almost impossible to find a genuine cab anywhere in London after 10pm. There are plenty of minicabs, but they are forbidden from picking up passengers without being ordered by phone first. There are also plenty of dodgy guys with cars hanging around outside late night bars and clubs, but every now and then the police clamp down on them, leaving thousands of people to spend the night on the streets of Brixton.
This is not a good thing. All it allows is for cab companies to serve more customers in the center of the action and not in the outskirts where it's already way to hard to hail a cab.
....cab drivers hail you!
And I'm not kidding either. The streets of Manhattan are so thick with yellow cabs that it rarely takes more than a wink or a nod for them to pull over.
It's gotten to the point where cabbies will see me walking out of my building a block away, honk their horn a few times to get my attention, and then I can respond with - literally - a tilt of the head or a slight shake and they're off.
So in NYC, this isn't going to do much good most of the time.
HOWEVER -- there are those insane times (i.e. shift changes, rain, randomly) when there are no cabbies anywhere. Perhaps then?
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
Zingo uses mobile technology to put passengers directly in contact with black cab drivers in their area that are free for a fare.
I've heard of affirmative action, but this is ridiculous!
The coolest voice ever.
Then, punters are automatically connected to an available cab driver in their area before the prospective passenger tells the cabbie exactly where they are.
Why do only certain football players get to use the system? (said the ignorant, yet cocky American)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
When trying to get to Kew it STILL won't find a cab that is willing to go "south of the river".
Technology is a wonderful thing but solving the aquaphobia of London cabbies is a harder task entirely.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's soooo easy to find a cab especially in London! I mean everywhere you look you see at least 5 of them...
Sounds senseless to me!
The real point is that they are charging the punter $2.56 american (1.60 Pounds, I just looked it up) for just hailing the cab!
Then you can look forward to at least another pound for engaging the taxi, and then you can finally start paying by the mile.
I'll wave my arms, it's free.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
...this should make frantic arm waving to get their attention a thing of the past.
Well, that's it. The last trace of human exercise has finally been eliminated by technology. Actually, it would have been nice if a computer could have thought up and typed this reply for me...
$8.95/mo web hosting
In NYC hailed cab drivers must drive you wherever you request, at least within the city limits. If they don't you can write down his/her hack license number, which also must be posted, and report the person. Maybe you could look into getting the same law (or maybe cab company rule) put into place in DC.
The bigger problem in NYC is racial discrimination. Many times an empty cab will pass a black person hailing them. Let's say you hail the cab with this new system, but when he arrives he takes off because of your color. Since the system would know which cab took the call it should be trivial to allow the caller to report the discrimination.
Developers: We can use your help.
Life imitates art.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I misread the title as "Using GPS to Hail Crabs", and I thought, no, thank you, but if I want crabs I can just find a dirty whore like the rest of the Luddites.
Oh man... Tthat's rich.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
The FCC has mandated that all cell phone operatores be able to locate an emergency caller by the end of '06. So far Sprint and Nextel have put GPS chipsets in their phones, but only Nextel gives the JVM running on the phone access to the location data. If you have a Motorola i88s or i58s you can download a midlet that will track your cell phone and update a web page with your location
Free cell phone tracking
Addison-Lee do use GPS. I use them around once a week (their standard service, with the MPVs) and every car I've been in has a dash mounted GPS navigation system. Admittedly it isn't much use in the centre, but out in the wilds of South London it appears to work OK.
This reminds me far too much of the little blue thing over people's heads in GTA III...
This is also why, when stumbling around drunk in Dublin or London, you should wave for a cab with your mobile to your ear.
This way, a hackney can pull over and let you in. If a garda (cop) questions, the hackney can just say that you called on the phone. You "hang it up" and agree.
I pulled it off about 50% of the time for a year -- that is, I'd get a hackney to pull over and pick me up, even though it was against the law because I didn't call first, about half the nights I got tanked on Guinness.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Here's The Guardian's story from back then. Not sure what happened since.
A few years ago I accidently made a cab stop just by loitering too close to the curb in downtown Chicago. Right by the side of the Sears Tower.
And then three more pulled up, and the drivers all got out and fought to the death over who'd get the fare. Boy, was *MY* face red when I had to inform the bloody, barely alive victor that I didn't need a cab.
No, I made that last bit up. I've been watching too many movies, too.
--- Ban humanity.
Blimey.....that's quite the convenience fee!
Still, I guess it beats the grotty Tube.
-psy
GPS is a great technology, but it's inaccurate at best. What happens when the cab shows up a block from the lazy person who hailed it. This is almost as dumb as the headline I read today about using GPS technoligy in shopping carts. Imagine trying to find carrots and ending up 7 aisles away in condoms?
The TLC (Taxi and Limo Commision) passed a rule making it a violation to not take you where you want to go (within the city limits of course...)
I used to ride by people with their arms out in NYC and give them high fives as I went about my business on my bicycle.
If they start using GPS no more high fiving the man while he waits on his cab.
*sigh*
It was fun while it lasted.
P.S. - YUO FAIL IT!!!!!!!1
Mobile Phone operator Singtel in Singapore has implemented a range of location based services since last year.
:
One of the services is to get a cab. The landmarks are locations close to your current position (in most cases within a 100m)
"You will receive a SMS listing the landmarks near your location for your pickup location. Select your preferred pickup location and confirm your booking. You will receive a SMS indicating the taxi number and estimated arrival time once the booking is successful."
Another good feature is busses. You can type your destination, and it will direct you to the nearest busstop, and give you the busnumbers and transit locations. Unfortunately they have implemented this for only one of the three main busoperators. Still it is a good start.
Many African Americans get left behind by cabbies avoiding "any black male" in certain parts of the city... By using this system, a caller would be able to signify whether they were actually *picked up* by their cab, and possibly assist in reprimanding cabbies that aren't doing their job... or pointing out (publically/online) which companies don't provide the necessary level of service. (By having a proxy website dispatch the calls)
meh
this should make frantic arm waving to get their attention a thing of the past.
Sure it will. Unless you look black, or hispanic, or middle-eastern....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
In-cab system: 2 fares available
Cabbie: Cab. Show phones.
In-cab system: 1. Motorola Micro-TAC. 2. Sony Ericsson P800.
Cabbie: Cab. Delete 1. Show route to 2.
...
In-cab system: 2 fares available.
Cabbie: Cab. Show names.
In-cab system: 1. Gupta. 2. Beckham.
Cabbie: Cab. Kill-file all with same name as 1. Show route to 2.
I already have an embedded technology called EYE which allows me to locate nearby taxicabs...
Of course the government and law enforcement would probably use any of this technology in a malicious way eventually too. How long until passive GPS/cell signal is built into driver's licences and ID cards in the interest of "improving infrastructure" somehow and then turned into a vast monitoring system?
And if it is all privatized, so much the better. Private companies are allowed to do things as citizens that the government wouldn't dream of.
This sounds like an opportunity for a new and interesting game. Stand on a NYC streetcorner and broadcast your location to all cabs in a 6 block radius. First cab to make the pickup wins. And you think the NYC cabbies are crazy now? Ha! just wait!
Before reading the comments posted here, I thought ./ readers have a clue about something... *rolls eyes*
Location services aren't limited to GSM. As a matter of fact, aGPS works on both CDMA and GSM. aGPS (assisted GPS) uses a combination of information from the cell phone tower as well as from the GPS satellites.
Can you get a cab with a driver who doesn't dream of being the next NASCAR champion?
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Our system used to work like this (Black & White Cabs in Brisbane, AU):
The area covered is divided up into "zones". Each zone has one "designated" rank in it (although there may be numerous actual ranks).
When you enter a "zone", you "book into" it via the computer in the cab. This puts you into a queue. Any jobs that come in over the radio that are determined to be originating from that zone will be handed off the cabs in the queue, FIFO.
If you are actually in the designated rank in a zone, you can book into the "rank zone". This gives you preference in the zone queue (ie: everyone in the "rank zone" will be serviced before anyone else in the zone queue, even if someone in the latter has been waiting longer). You *have* to be parked in the rank to be allowed to book into the "rank zone" and if you aren't you will probably be dobbed in by everyone else on it.
If there's no-one booked into the zone where a job originates, the computer will search all surrounding zones for someone booked into one of them. If there's still no car found, it will use the GPS system to locate the nearest vehicle (it's actually a touch more complicated, but this is a rough summary).
Thus, the GPS really only becomes a factor when you are *way* out in the sticks, because anywhere remotely busy will always have at least one cab booked into it.
The only other things the GPS is used for is making sure cabs can't book into zones they aren't actually in (or close to) and locating vehicles in the case of emergency.
This system seems to me to be a fair way of balancing the customer's right to quick service and cabbies' right to be able to consistently earn a reasonable income. Speaking from the perspective of an ex-driver, I don't think I like the idea of a job always going to the physically closest vehicle. I can see it starting a *lot* of arguments.
Hypothetically...
Black guys calls up one, the camera's built in camera snaps a pic, notifies the driver:
Nothing
Black guy holds picture of white guy in camera's view:
*ERRRCH!* "Where are you go..." *VROOOOMMMMM*
or rather, the women I work with in central London use Zingo a fair amount, usually after one too many pints at the end of our press day.
Yes, there are only 500 of them, but so far, if they've been able to get a black cab before the nominated cabbie turns up, they've not had to pay the £1.60 fee.
Black cabs mostly operate in central London - I can see this being handy in the outlying areas and 'burbs, where people use minicabs more.
One reason why this could be popular is that it gives minicab-like hailing services for Black Cabs (and yes, it's been possible to call a black cab in the past, but there's a large number of companies that do this).
Most guides to London reccommend that if you're a: female and b: travelling on your own, to take a black cab instead of a minicab. Minicabs have an exceedingly dodgy reputation, whereas Black cabs (ie, Hackney Carriages) are heavily regulated and driven by people who have made a career out of cabbying.
In short, it's been handy on a few occasions for some of my friends. It's not a massive inflection point or the best thing since sliced bread, but it's not sold as that.
In Oslo, Norway, we have already had this service for a year or so. You dial either of two numbers, one leads you to the nearest taxi-stop, whilst the other gets the nearest free cab. During peak hours only the first one is open, to make sure that cabs are distributed in a fair manner to customers. It works beautifully; both customers and drivers gets an easier life.
Riders may like this, but I don't see how cabbies would like it (at least in places like NYC) if they can't tell what your ethnic origin is beforehand. There needs to be some sort of ethnic identification signal involved here so the cabbies will have a way to tell beforehand whether or not they should bother to come and pick you up. I mean, geez, it could shake up the entire taxi cab industry if you have cabbies actually picking up non-caucasians.
Note to the clueless: this message is tongue-in-cheek.
In the UK we don't need to wave our arms in the air to get a taxi.
We have a thing called a phone, and we phone a number and ask for a taxi.
However, most of the time, you can just walk out of the station or walk to a bus stop serviced by an unreliable bus and there they are. Taxi drivers circling like seagulls!
Well, I don't know if cabbies know about The Strong Law of Large Numbers, so this argument may fall on deaf ears, but it turns out that any system that makes choices at random (i.e. without bias) is ultimately fair to everyone involved if given enough time. It won't necessarily be exactly balanced, but basically it will all average out in the end.
Having said that, assigning the call to the driver nearest the passenger's location may in fact favor some drivers, if some drivers are able to find a way to (on average) be nearer to the waiting passengers than other drivers are. But if that happens, then the drivers that manage to do that have actually accomplished something. They'd be putting more value into their service (their skill in being at the right place at the right time), and thus would deserve to be rewarded IMHO.
Personally, though, I don't care all that much. In cities which are characterised by sprawl, I generally prefer to drive myself. If there's a decent subway system, I'd rather take that because I've always thought trains were neat and because I prefer to walk a little (to the station). In cities which are very dense and also don't have any sort of train or subway system, I generally take whatever form of transportation gets me out of that city as soon as possible...
Scientific American Frontiers did an interesting piece on how learning "The Knowledge" produces a physiological change in the brain. Studies have shown that the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with memory and navigation, grows larger during the several years required to become a cabbie.
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