A trustworthy distributed social carpool method

Abstract

Due to the increase in the number of vehicles over the years, roads are witnesses of frequent traffic congestions, especially in urban environments. The problem is even worse because most vehicles are occupied by a single person. Therefore, a possible solution would be to use carpooling to increase the number of people in vehicles. In this way, commuters who travel from and to nearby places will share the same vehicle. Existing carpool solutions are unpopular for most people because of the distrust generated by carpooling with strangers. Thanks to the widespread of mobile technology and social networks, it is possible to create a reliable, friendly and secure carpool system. This paper proposes the design and implementation of an integrated solution that can be used to improve existing carpool solutions. The proposal is based on a novel algorithm that rates user behaviours based on interactions and friendship degrees. In addition to this, the whole carpool system has been developed as a mobile application for Android devices, and the Open Source Project is already available on the Github platform.