Texas A&M University Bus App

Route from Reed Arena to the Commons. Every black dot represents a stop along the route. The green dot is the start and the red is the stop.
Chatbot interacting with a user regarding bus route information.

Inspiration

The current TAMU Bus App is, according to students, hard to navigate and difficult to understand. Thus, we were inspired to provide a user-friendly solution for students to enable them to get the most out of the TAMU Bus System.

What it does

The TAMU Bus App offers users a seamless user-friendly experience. Our app provides Texas A&M Students a integrated navigation system so they can obtain directions, bus information, and receive help from our chatbot all in one place.

How we built it

We researched TAMU transit systems to gather information regarding bus stops. Then, we built our own bus map layers to create a convenient way to navigate the bus. In addition, we created a chatbot equipped with knowledge about the TAMU Bus System and eateries around the area.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into challenges accessing APIs to obtain our information. Additionally, managing map layers on ArcGIS was difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We continued to persevere through the hackathon and innovated new ways to get the information we needed for the development of our app. We continued to try new methods and were patient when it came to finding what worked.

What we learned

We learned a lot from the workshops provided throughout the Hackathon. We learned webscraping, chatbot development, and got experience using a complex geographic information system. In addition, team members with less experience were able to learn plenty about HTML and CSS. Altogether as a team, we gained experience through overcoming the challenges and difficulties that came in the way of developing our app.

What's next for Texas A&M University Bus Navigation System

TAMU Bus App hopes to continue to expand and incorporate user-friendly features. Doing this would give students a easy way to navigate across and beyond campus. Consequently, TAMU Bus App would have a monumental impact. It would encourage student use of the TAMU Bus System and, as a result, it will increase the growth of the TAMU Bus System.

Applying OpenAI API to create the chatbot

The chatbot is an user-friendly interface which can receive the requests from users about the departure and destination. The chatbot then suggests the most efficient bus routes for users based on the information from the bus routes of transport.tamu.edu. The chatbot suggests the bus number, the departure stop, the destination stop, and instructions to take the bus from departure to destination. This tool is helpful for new users, especially freshman who do not have experience taking TAMU buses.