A multiple-platform decentralized route finding system

Abstract

This paper describes a simple route finding system that is not specific to any particular road map and is platform independent. The main features of the system are an easy-to-use graphical user interface and quick response times for finding optimal or near optimal routes. The system can be run on a desktop computer from home or the office, accessed through the internet, or even run on a palmtop computer sitting in a car. To speed up the process of finding an optimal or near optimal route, we evaluated a number of heuristic search strategies. It turned out that heuristic search can give substantial efficiency improvements and that inadmissible heuristics can be appropriate if non-optimal solutions are permitted. Furthermore, it turned out that incorporating heuristic knowledge about commonly used intersections, through subgoal search, can dramatically increase search performance.