Volume III, Issue IV, April 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705

Mobile Application for Carpool System

1
Utkarsh Singh, 2Deepak Shinde, 3Tushar Sanap, 4Nilesh Patil, 5Prof. Rahul Jadhav
1234
Student, 5Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Engineering, Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Vashi, Navi Mumbai

Abstract— Carpooling (also car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift- contribution based on the distance that they travel. This gives
sharing), is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one carpooling extra flexibility, and enables more people to share
person travels in a car. By having more people using one vehicle, journeys and save money.
carpooling reduces each person's travel costs such as fuel costs,
tolls, and the stress of driving. Carpooling is seen as a more
environmentally friendly and sustainable way to travel as
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
sharing journeys reduces carbon emissions, traffic congestion on The literature survey consists of two existing systems named
the roads, and the need for parking spaces. Authorities often as follows:
encourage carpooling, especially during high pollution periods
and high fuel prices. A. Blablacar
B. Folksvagn
I. INTRODUCTION
A. BLABLACAR[1]
[2]

I n Mumbai alone, there are 230,000 vehicles plying on the

roads at any point point of time essentially a 55%[4] increase
in the past 5 years and this figure is increasing steeply
BlaBlaCar is the world's largest long-distance ridesharing
community. Conceived in December 2003 by
FrédéricMazzella, and founded in 2006, BlaBlaCar connects
everyday
drivers and passengers willing to travel together between
This gives rise to three prime factors: cities and share the cost of the journey. BlaBlaCar has more
than 20 million members across 19 countries. [3]
1. Pollution
2. Depletion and rising rates of fossil fuels Members must register and create a personal online profile,
3. Massive traffic congestions which includes ratings and reviews by other members, social
network verification, and rate of response. “Profiles of
Most of the people, on an average, have to travel 15 km[2] to members show how much experience they have of the service,
reach their workplace. Besides long working hours, the stress meaning those with more – known as "ambassadors" – attract
of driving a car or a two-wheeler for a minimum of 40 more ride shares.
minutes adds to the exhaustion.
One major shortcoming of this application is that it only offers
The idea is to bring together car owners and passengers inter-city carpooling options which our application aims to
looking for carpool service. The users have to make clear that rectify and add intra-city commuting options too.
they are willing to share personal vehicles with people
travelling to the destination daily. The application seeks
details about the starting and end points of travel which are B. FOLKSVAGN[1]
processed to draw a list of professionals who have identical FolksVagn offers a community-based system that helps
requirements. people share rides with others. While the passengers get rides
Drivers and passengers offer and search for journeys through at costs much cheaper than a regular taxi service, the car
one of the several mediums available. After finding a match owner gets a share of the fare.
they contact each other to arrange any details for the It is open only to corporate clients as it requires a corporate
journey(s). Costs, meeting points and other details like space email for registration and has a prepaid account or online
for luggage are agreed on. They then meet and carry out their wallet system to pay for the ride.
shared car journey(s) as planned.
Carpooling is commonly implemented forcommutingbut is III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
increasingly popular for longer one-off journeys, with the The Carpooling application will be implemented in Android
formality and regularity of arrangements varying between operating mobile phones. The application will try to cover the
schemes and journeys. following:
Carpooling is not always arranged for the whole length of a ● User accounts for both the ride providers and the ride
journey. Especially on long journeys, it is common for seekers.
passengers to only join for parts of the journey, and give a ● Use GPS to find nearby carpoolers.

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 Volume III, Issue IV, April 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705

● Find optimum paths and allow carpooler to choose In this module, a user who has vacant seats in a car and is
one from it. going in a particular direction, say from point A to B fills in
● Integrating google maps so that the ride provider can necessary details such as Name, License plate number, car
provide his detailed route and then the potential make, the route that he follows to get to his destination using
passengers can view and decide their boarding and Google Maps into the application which is then accessible to
de-boarding point. all other members who are registered in the application. The
● User profile which will have car details like person offering the ride can also fill in his preferences about
registration number, color and model of the car apart the smoking, music, pet travel conditions that he expects the
from the profile photo of the user fetched from his co-passenger to abide by. The person offering the ride has the
google account. liberty to accept or decline requests from other users looking
● Option to choose the carpoolers so as to give women to pool with him or her.
the option to travel with women only.
 Profile rating to ensure the quality of ride. 3 .SEEK RIDE
· Chat Rooms for online users to interact and co-ordinate and This module will be responsible of seeking or finding a
quick messaging Emergency button to send current location suitable ride as per carpoolers’ requirements. Whenever a
of the passenger to a pre-specified contact in case of carpooler or a user searching for a ride queries the system for
emergency. availability of rides from source A to destination B, system
will check the user’s current location and reply back with all
IV. SYSTEM DESIGN currently plying rides with vacancies on the same route within
5 km radius from user’s current location with the help of
This deals with the system block diagram and the data flow Google Maps & GPS module. The user will select most
diagram of the proposed Carpool System. suitable ride and send a request to the person offering the ride
and if the ride-provider accepts the request, then module will
BLOCK DIAGRAM prompt the ride details consisting estimated arrival time,
estimated delay (if any), corresponding car and ride provider
The block diagram for Mobile Application for Carpooling
details.
System is as shown in Figure. 1
4. FEEDBACK
In order to provide all users a quality and hassle free service, a
feedback system is implemented that will allow the co-
passengers to rate the driver or ride provider and vice versa.

5. EMERGENCY
This module is responsible for assessing and responding to the
emergency situations which may arise while carpooling. This
service can be accessed by the emergency button provided on
the screen. Emergency situations, like accidents, can be
responded by sending a message to the Emergency Contacts
taken from user at the time of registration and sending a
request to Ambulance Services and Police Station of
respective area with the help of user’s current location.
Figure 1 For women safety concern, the emergency module can be
used to inform the Emergency Contacts and the Police Station
There will be 4 important modules as shown in figure 1:
of respective area with user’s current location to get the help.
1. Registration
2. Offer Ride V. IMPLEMENTATION
3. Seek Ride
4. Feedback This project uses following modules:
5. Emergency
Volley Library:
1. REGISTRATION Volley [5] is an HTTP library that makes networking for
Android apps easier and most importantly, faster. Volley is
This module takes in all the relevant information pertaining to
both the users - ride providers and ride sharers. available through the open AOSP (Android Open Source
Project) repository.
2. OFFER RIDE

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Volume III, Issue IV, April 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705

Volley excels at RPC-type operations used to populate a UI, The API automatically handles access to Google Maps
such as fetching a page of search results as structured data. It servers, data downloading, map display, and response to map
integrates easily with any protocol and comes out of the box gestures. Also there are API calls to add markers, polygons,
with support for raw strings, images, and JSON. By providing and overlays to a basic map, and to change the user's view of a
built-in support for the features you need, Volley frees you particular map area. These objects provide additional
from writing boilerplate code and allows you to concentrate information for map locations, and allow user interaction with
on the logic that is specific to the app. the map. The API allows you to add these graphics to a map:
Volley plays a key role in sending data to the server and
fetching the data from the server whenever required in a faster Google Maps directions API [8]:
way.
The Directions API is used for finding the distance and
directions between two locations on the map. It results the
Server handling using PHP/MySQL:
optimum route between the two locations. The Directions API
All user data is stored in the MySQL database on the server. calculates directions between locations using an HTTP request
This database is updated as the application runs its course. To made from user application. Request URL editing is done in
handle the database manipulations PHP along with the following format:
MySQL (A relational database driver used in the PHP
programming language to provide an interface with MySQL
databases) is used. This PHP scripts are invoked whenever
applications requests for a data change. Application uses JSON output format and parameter include
coordinates for source, destination, and maximum of 8
Google Cloud Messaging: waypoints between them.
This application uses GCM [6] for implementing the chat Returned result in contains the directions details in encoded
rooms. Chat rooms enables various users to communicate with polyline points format which gets decoded using an algorithm
each other in a group chat fashion. Typically GCM implemented in JAVA[9].This returns points to be plotted on
implementation involves three components. Google cloud the map to generate the route.
messaging server, the app server and the client app. We
should take care of writing the app server and the client app. This is used in Offer Ride where user can see decide route
In order to make calls from the app server to GCM server he/she wants to follow before creating a ride and in searched
XAMP protocol is followed. XAMP supports both ride details where other users can get know which route ride
downstream and upstream (device to GCM, then from GCM provider is going to follow.
to server) messages.
Google Place Autocomplete [10]
To enhance the user experience application has used
autocomplete service from Google Places API for Android. It
returns place predictions in response to user search queries.
As the user types, the autocomplete service returns
suggestions for places such as businesses, addresses and
points of interest. The application uses an autocomplete
widget for this functionality in where user enters search terms,
the widget presents a list of predicted places to choose from.
When the user makes a selection, a Place instance is returned,
which is used to get location coordinates for the selected
place.

Location Services [11]

GPS and Network Providers are two different ways to get
Android device location (latitude and longitude). This
application uses both of them to get precise location details in
both outdoor and indoor locations. It is done by implementing
Google Maps API [7]: Location Listener interface to receive continuous location
This application also uses Google Maps API. This API is used updates even if device moves.
to add maps to the application, which will inturn used to show
user locations, draw journey path etc. Reverse Geocoding [12]

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Volume III, Issue IV, April 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705

Reverse geocoding is the process of back (reverse) coding of a

point location (latitude, longitude) to a readable address or
place name. This permits the identification of nearby street
addresses, places, and/or areal subdivisions such as
neighborhoods, county, state, or country. Combined with
geocoding and routing services, reverse geocoding is a critical
component of mobile location-based services and Enhanced
911 to convert a coordinate obtained by GPS to a readable
street address which is easier to understand by the end user.
Application uses reverse geocoding to get current location’s
address to search and offer ride from current location.

VI. SCREENSHOTS

Offer Ride:

This is the screen of application where user can search rides

for carpooling between the interested source and destination.
Application allows users to search ride from either user’s
current location or any desired source location to desired
destination and it returns all the available rides supporting
users’ needs.

User can see the route, ride provider wishes to follow by

clicking the map icon in ride description from the list of
available rides.

From this screen user can send carpooling request to ride

provider and to show interest in his/her carpool.

Your Rides:

This is the screen of application where user can offer ride for This page displays all the rides user has created until now.
carpooling. User can offer ride from his/her current location User then can view them for summary and delete them when
or any desired source location to any desired destination he wants to.
possible via car route on map.

The distinguishing feature of this application is that if user

does not wish to follow the optimized path suggested by the
application then user can add up to 8 waypoints to mould the
route as per convenience and applications provides the
optimized path through those waypoints.

Application allows user to offer two kinds of rides namely -

single ride and other is return ride (to and fro) if user wishes
to offer ride on return journey too. After filling in all details
required for ride, user can confirm ride and this offered ride
will be made available to other users to pitch in carpool
request.

Seek Ride:

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Volume III, Issue IV, April 2016 IJRSI ISSN 2321 – 2705

Emergency Button: VII. CONCLUSION

This paper elaborates the proposed system which consists of 5
When user clicks this button for 5 times continuously within main modules which are Offer a ride, Seek a ride, Feedback,
the duration of 3 seconds, the application sends the GPS Emergency, and user authentication via Registration. This
coordinates of the user to the predefined emergency contact in system involves support from Google maps services and GPS
emergency contact module. This feature is essential for module to provide user specific services and through
emergency situations and women safety. Multiple button click Feedback the user experiences are recorded for rating the
requirement avoids the false positives of this feature. users. The user’s safety is supported by an Emergency
Module which is connected to the local emergency services to
provide required help.
The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the initial
prototype of the proposed system.

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[8]. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/intr
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[12]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_geocoding
Chat Room:

This feature enables all the users to group chat

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