[OSM-dev] Open Social Routing Idea: Request for preliminary comments

[Frederik Ramm]

Jonas,

Jonas Gabriel wrote:
> I am in search of a Master Thesis' project idea in the field of Location 
> Based Applications/Services. Last night I came 
> across OpenRouteService.org <http://www.openrouteservice.org/> and had 
> an epiphany about a routing service based on social contribution.Let me 
> clear out my idea:

Peter Miller has done a talk at the 2008 State of the Map conference (in 
Limerick) about something in that direction; he explained that different 
people may favour different routes for very different reasons and that 
it could be a good idea to ask: "What route would people like me use?"

Personally I would probably not make it as difficult as you; I would 
simply allow individual weights for bits of the routing graph. I.e. you 
would not upload a route; instead you would have the system compute the 
route it thinks is best, and then you'd say: "Nah, I don't like that 
because it takes me along a busy road. I'll add a 50% penalty to that 
road and see where it takes me now. Oh well it doesn't use that bit of 
footway there but it really should, so I'll give that a bonus, etc.

Anyone could then use the routing engine either with the normal weights, 
or with a combination of weights of different users.

But still this might be too big for a Master's thesis.

Bye
Frederik