If you are tired of trudging around cities using Google Maps without options, Lara is one navigation app worth a try. In this article, Jesimiel Williams explains how Lara can make navigating around your city a little easier.
Getting lost in your city can be a grueling experience. The dilemma of knowing that whatever trip you may have planned for that day may go in the bin because you have no idea how to get to where you need to be. For the more introverted part of the population, the ordeals may be twice as tiring as they have to approach strangers to ask for directions, they may be ignored or
even directed farther away from their destination. When you however have an AI bot designed to respond to your every question about navigating public transport in your pocket, the troubles of commuting become half as bothersome.
Sam Odeloye, the CEO of Roadpreppers’, the parent company of the autobot Lara and his team actively worked toward solving the problems of navigating public transport, in documenting and utilizing transport data that had been previously non-existent. This process led to the development of Lara.ng
Lara is an AI chatbot designed to provide directions to locations in Nigeria. Originally launched in 2017, Lara provided directions and fare prices using from and to queries from users. Users could then easily request how to reach their destinations and get accurate responses in Lagos. However, with the growing transport space in Nigeria, the app has begun to expand in capabilities so as to cater to the evolving needs of the average Nigerian. Lara.ng’s recent feature update was launched in February 2021, designed with features aimed at personalizing the user experience on the app, while also developing features that would give users autonomy of planning and navigating trips in Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, and a ton of new cities in Nigeria.
The innovative feature update allows for users to navigate from their current locations, easing the process of trying to figure out where you are once you may be lost. The application actively suggests end destinations based on the information made available to users for users who may not be familiar with the right spellings. The feature update allows for users to filter the direction results by their preferred transportation medium (Danfo, BRT, Okada, and Keke), share the directions to locations, save previous trips, and access them later on, amongst many other features.
The value of an AI bot with the relevant data to optimize the everyday traveler’s standard of transport experience, as well as Roadpreppers’ aim of building an efficient public transit system, for designing better, smarter cities is more than evident to existing users. The startup plans to move into other larger Sub-Saharan African cities like Accra and Nairobi shortly to ease public transport systems in different parts of the continent.
