Pre-loading Traveler Content for Offline Flight Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Air travel can be stressful and unproductive due to limited access to entertainment and information services during flights, especially when crossing regions without internet connectivity.
Innovation Solution
A system that pre-loads traveler content onto a vehicle's repository before departure, using travel ticket information and access details, allowing onboard access to personal and online content during the trip, even in regions without internet access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traveler content is accessed during flight, then entertainment and information availability is improved, but connectivity reliability deteriorates when crossing regions without internet access
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-loads traveler content (entertainment, information, emails) onto the vehicle's repository before the flight begins. This preliminary action ensures that content is available during the flight even when outside terrestrial network coverage, resolving the contradiction between content accessibility and connectivity reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a local copy of the content in the vehicle's repository. Instead of requiring continuous live access to remote content sources, the system stores replicated copies on the vehicle, enabling offline access and maintaining reliability during regions without internet connectivity.
2Ease of operation
If content is pre-loaded onto the vehicle, then content availability during trip is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The vehicle's existing repository system serves multiple functions: it stores pre-loaded content for entertainment, caches web content for offline access, and provides local storage for traveler information. This multi-functionality approach avoids adding separate complex content management systems while still achieving content availability during the trip.
Solution Approach 2:
The server acts as an intermediary that automatically handles content retrieval, validation, and delivery to the vehicle's repository. This intermediary system abstracts the complexity of content management from the vehicle, allowing pre-loading functionality without significantly increasing on-vehicle system complexity.
3Loss of information
If real-time content access is maintained during flight, then information freshness is improved, but loss of information increases when disconnected from source
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary content retrieval and caching before the flight begins. This ensures that the latest information is available at departure and can be accessed throughout the flight, preventing information loss during the disconnected flight period while maintaining information freshness through pre-synchronization.
Data Source
AI summary
A method to provide traveler content service. The method includes receiving, from the traveler and prior to the trip, a request to access traveler content during the trip, wherein the request comprises travel ticket information associated with the trip and access information to a source of the traveler content, wherein the trip crosses a region with no access to the source of the traveler content, retrieving, prior to the trip, the traveler content from the source using the access information, transmitting, in response to detecting a first vehicle assigned to the trip at a departure port of the trip, the traveler content to a first traveler content repository onboard the first vehicle to generate a traveler content first onboard copy, and providing, during the trip and by an onboard computer processor of the first vehicle, the traveler content first onboard copy from the first traveler content repository to the traveler.