The Regional Transport Research and Education Centre (TRECK), College of Engineering (CoE) and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CoHSS) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), have taken a giant lead in the technology advancement by introducing the most reliable mobile app named ‘myTroski.’
The app provides a quick and easy way to find places and plan travel in Ghana. ‘myTroski’was funded by the KNUST Research Fund (KReF) at GHS30,000 and was launched on 24th February 2022 at the Postgraduate School Block, KNUST.
The Provost of the CoHSS, Professor Charles Ofosu Marfo, giving a background to the project, explained that finding places and getting travel directions are common and difficult challenges in Ghana. The problem with directions he believes, exists because there is no national standard for an address system which is actively in use for daily activities and compounded by several factors, some of which include the informal arrangement of land parcels, layout of settlements and roads, limited zoning, and lack of practical addressing system. Therefore, the app myTroski to specifically address the challenges, he stated.
Launching the app, the Provost explained that the app operates in hybrid mode; allowing one to use its services without mobile data in online mode. ‘myTroski’ app can guide you with a real-time location indicator (GPS), together with a message in writing for audio (voice) using Akan (Twi) and English.
Dr. Gift Dumedah, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Geography and Rural Development giving an overview of the app explained the key services provided by the App. These include descriptive landmark information, finding of nearby landmarks based on GPS location, general search and find over the entire map, and travel routing and planning. The descriptive landmark information allows one to explore and see more of the services for landmarks, for example name of a landmark, type of amenity, building type, services available, number of floors, owner, nearby landmarks, location name among others. The search and find facility allow the user to provide the place name in a text where suggestions are also provided for the user to choose from. The routing service provides a turn-by-turn navigation information graphically and in text and audio for the origin and destinations pairs. The travel planning service allows one to explore the resulting routing output and the use of alternate route.
The team expects that Ghanaians would use the App to go about their daily activities which will lead to wide uptake and hopes that the App would be adopted by other cities and beyond.
The District Police Commander, Superintendent Henry Hammond lauded the initiative of the team. He trusts that the app would aid the Police in finding specific crime scenes. He hoped that the government will support such great move and expand it for national use.
The App can be obtained onto smartphone from the myTroski website, (here!), or Google Play store (here!). It is worth noting that, for now, myTroski is at its initial stage and, therefore, it covers only areas in the Oforikrom Municipality of Ashanti Region of Ghana.