Return Trip Route Planning with Scenic Attractiveness Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods for planning return trips in road networks often fail to optimize for aesthetic and scenic factors, such as curvature and scenic appeal, and do not allow for flexible balancing between route quality and computation time, especially when including interim destinations.
Innovation Solution
A method that assigns a percentage measure of attractiveness to each road section based on factors like curvature, scenic appeal, and surroundings, using a contraction hierarchy with nested dissection orders for preprocessing, allowing for distance-weighted average optimization of route quality and permitting optional interim destinations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If conventional routing algorithms are used to plan return trips, then computation time is reduced, but route aesthetic quality and scenic appeal are not optimized
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by precomputing a contraction hierarchy of the road network before actual route planning. This preprocessing step organizes the road network into hierarchical levels, allowing faster querying during actual trip planning. The contraction hierarchy captures scenic and aesthetic properties in advance, so that when a return trip is planned, the system can quickly evaluate multiple routes based on pre-analyzed quality metrics rather than computing everything from scratch.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the road network into a contraction hierarchy with multiple levels, where higher levels represent more abstract road patterns and lower levels represent detailed local routes. This segmentation allows the algorithm to first explore high-level routes for overall quality and then refine with detailed local paths. The segmentation also divides the return trip planning into separate outward and inward journey computations, enabling independent optimization of each leg.
2Manufacturing precision
If multiple routing options with aesthetic optimization are computed, then route quality is improved, but computation time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dynamics by making the route planning process adaptive and flexible. The system dynamically adjusts the search depth and exploration scope based on the contraction hierarchy levels. When computing outward and inward journeys, the algorithm can dynamically switch between exploring more scenic routes (which take longer) and more direct routes (which are faster), allowing flexible balancing between route quality and computation time based on user needs.
3Adaptability or versatility
If conventional routing methods are used, then simple point-to-point navigation is achieved, but flexible interim destinations and aesthetic optimization are not possible
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the return trip into separate outward and inward journey computations. This segmentation enables the system to independently optimize each leg of the trip for aesthetic quality while allowing flexible insertion of interim destinations. The outward journey from starting point to destination can be optimized separately from the return journey, and each can include multiple waypoints or interim destinations without compromising the other.
Data Source
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AI summary
The invention provides a method of planning a return trip between a given starting point (s) and a given destination characterized in that, in a first step of the method, outward routes from the starting point (s) to the destination (t) are computed, in a second step of the method, inward routes from the destination (t) to the starting point (s) are computed, and, in a third step of the method, a first leg is selected among the outward routes and a second leg is selected among the inward routes such that a concatenation of the first leg and second leg maximizes a given quality criterion and totals a desired mileage. The invention further provides a corresponding data processing apparatus, a corresponding computer program, and a corresponding medium.