The Importance of Adaptivity to Provide Onboard Services: A Preliminary Evaluation of an Adaptive Tourist Information Service Onboard Vehicles

In this paper, we present the results of a preliminary evaluation of MastroCARONTE, an adaptive system which provides tourist information onboard cars. MastroCARONTE personalizes the tourist suggestions (about hotels, restaurants, and places of interests), the way they are presented, and its own behavior according to a model of the user (driver) and a model of the context of interaction (e.g., time, location, and driving conditions). After a short description of the role that adaptation and personalization can play in mobile systems installed on vehicles, we briefly describe the goals and architecture of MastroCARONTE, focusing on the forms of adaptation that it implements. We then describe an evaluation exercise that we performed on the system. This preliminary evaluation shows that the system can indeed provide immediately the pieces of information that are most suitable for a user, presenting them in a way which is compatible with the user capabilities and the risk of the contextual situation. We emphasize this point, since it is a must for a system to be used safely by a driver in a car.