Finding the Most Navigable Path in Road Networks: A Summary of Results

Abstract

Input to the Most Navigable Path (MNP) problem consists of the following: (a) a road network represented as a directed graph, where each edge is associated with numeric attributes of cost and “navigability score” values; (b) a source and a destination and; (c) a budget value which denotes the maximum permissible cost of the solution. Given the input, MNP aims to determine a path between the source and the destination which maximizes the navigability score while constraining its cost to be within the given budget value. This problem finds its applications in navigation systems for developing nations where streets, quite often, do not display their names. MNP problem would help in such cases by providing routes which are more convenient for a driver to identify and follow. Our problem is modeled as the arc orienteering problem which is known to be NP-hard. The current state-of-the-art for this problem may generate paths having loops, and its adaptation for MNP, that yields simple paths, was found to be inefficient. In this paper, we propose two novel algorithms for the MNP problem. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed solutions yield comparable or better solutions while being orders of magnitude faster than the current state-of-the-art for large real road networks. We also propose an indexing structure for the MNP problem which significantly reduces the running time of our algorithms.