Dates of Interest

• Due: Monday, May 14, 2007 (11:59PM)

Procedural Information

• Your solution to the exam should be presented in a professional manner. This includes formatting, spelling, grammar, &c.
• A submission directory will be created within the course Andrew space. Your solution should be submitted in .pdf, .ps, .tex, or .doc format by copying it into this space before the deadline.
• If you are unable to submit your solution electronically, please report the problem to the course staff. We will work with you to correct any problems.
• Please remember that we are unable to process assigments submitted via e-mail.
• In accordance with University policy, once you begin work on this exam, you should submit it within 24 hours. Beginning work is hereby defined as doing more than reading this page, giving it a few minutes to one hour of thought, and assessing when you would like to begin.

Important Note

You may discuss course material and the exam question, itself, througout the exam period. But, please do not discuss your solution or appropaches to the problem, &c. In other words, feel free to study together and to discuss the question's scope and intent together -- but take the exam independently. Please continue to "remain silent" about about your solution to the exam and possible approaches until final grades have been assigned and recorded by the instructor.

These guidelines are not designed to be overly restrictive. In fact, they are designed to be rather liberal. They should be interpreted in a manner that is consistent with the following governing principles:

• Your solutions to the exam questions should be the product of your own though processes.
• You should provide proper attribution to those who contributed ideas that were not the product of your thought processes, but are present in your solution.
• Discussion of lecture material is a good thing.

Legal resources:

• Your textbook, your notes, and material residing within the 15-498 Web space
• Conversations with anyone to clarify any material present in the resources listed above: if you can point at it, you can discuss it. (Conversations should be read broadly, not necessarily face-to-face)
• Conversations with anyone to clarify the meaning or expectation associated with each of the exam questions.
• Anything approved by the course staff in writing, e-mail, or updates to this Web page.

Illegal resources:

• Anything not listed above.

Scope of This Exam

This exam is intended to take you about three hours and certainly ot more than five hours. The solution, flushed out in complete detail, could take weeks to design, and even longer to implement. We're certainly not asking you to do this.

Instead, please identify the major challenges, potential solutions, and trade-offs. Please also discuss challenges and pitfalls. And, of course, provide a general sketch of the architecture of your solution.

Overview

Your goal is to design a system to advise drivers en route to work of traffic situations and to suggest better ways of travelling. The suggestions should respond to actual traffic conditions as observed from each of the individual cars.

The complication is that this information should be completely cooperative. All information should originate with your on-board devices and be communicated only via wireless among the cars.

The System Model

• Each car is equipped with a standard GPS-based location service
• Each car is equipped with the commodity wireless communication device of your choice: mobile phone, 802.11b/g, bluetooth, IRDA, &c.
• Each car is equipped with a full-and-complete understanding of the layout of all of the relevant roads.
• You may, at your option, allow for very simple human hints to the system. The interface should not distract the driver. It might, for example, include simple buttons to record events (accident, congestion, roadwork, pedestrian, medical, law enforcement)

Constraints

• The system should collect the various inputs and suggest alternate routes to drivers.
• The suggestions should be in reaction to actual driving conditions as well as known routes.
• The suggestions should be cooperative -- so all cars should not be reouted the same way.
• The suggestions should be reactive as things change.
• You need not define the particular shortest path heuristics, network protocols, &c. Instead, focus on manging the information and on the big-picture communication paradigm issues.