Design of an adaptive Smart Card with in-lab experiments

This work encompasses the study of computer driven technologies for building an efficient and adaptable man-machine interface for the automation of travel-related information and services in IVHS (intelligent vehicle highway systems). Specifically, we plan to develop a "Smart Card" based system to access any travel-related information. The unique feature of the system is that it is based on the personality and preferences of a given user or user-category. The display formats, (e.g. text, audio, hardcopy), interfaces, preference-based queries (e.g. cost, travel time, highway/arterial roads, etc.) will be tailored to the given user/user-category. This will be realized by state-of-the-art ASIC technology called reconfigurable field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Since the system can adapt to an individual's (or group of individuals) taste, we expect that it will have greater acceptance by the user community. In addition, the use of FPGAs and modern CAD based design will result in better performance in terms of response time for a given query and decrease the cost of a system, which makes it very practical. Our system will be a significant improvement over the existing Smart Card technologies which are mostly restricted to purchasing tickets in large quantities. The proposed system will take into account both ticketing and access to information services, and serve as a tool for monitoring the performance of an information server.