Route Planning with Convenience Cost Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current navigation systems fail to effectively generate routes that consider the availability of resources and services along the route, leading to potential issues such as fuel exhaustion or lack of essential facilities, which can impact safety and efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that determines routes based on travel costs and convenience costs associated with the availability of facilities like refueling stations, restaurants, and recreation areas, using a computing system to select routes that prioritize user preferences and ensure proximity to necessary services.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If navigation systems prioritize shortest travel time or distance, then travel efficiency is improved, but safety and reliability deteriorate due to potential fuel exhaustion or lack of essential facilities
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by calculating convenience costs and identifying essential facilities (refueling stations, restaurants, recreation areas) along potential routes before final route selection. This advance planning ensures that the selected route maintains proximity to necessary services, preventing fuel exhaustion and ensuring access to essential facilities while still achieving travel efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the routing parameters by introducing convenience costs as an additional factor alongside traditional travel time and distance. By modifying the cost function to include proximity to essential facilities, the system optimizes routes that balance travel efficiency with safety and reliability constraints.
2Reliability
If navigation systems consider multiple constraints including facility availability, then safety and reliability are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The routing system performs multiple functions simultaneously: it calculates traditional travel costs (time and distance) while also computing convenience costs related to facility proximity. This multi-functional approach integrates safety and reliability considerations into the existing route calculation framework without requiring separate systems, thereby managing complexity while improving reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses the existing computational infrastructure of navigation devices to perform additional convenience cost calculations. By leveraging the device's own processing capabilities and existing data structures, the system incorporates facility availability constraints without proportionally increasing device complexity.
3Productivity
If routes are optimized for minimal travel cost, then productivity is improved, but loss of time occurs due to detours to access essential facilities
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the optimization parameters by combining travel cost and convenience cost into a unified route selection criterion. Instead of minimizing only travel time or distance, the system optimizes for a composite metric that balances productivity (travel efficiency) with the need to access essential facilities, thereby reducing time loss from detours while maintaining overall travel efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary identification of routes that naturally pass near essential facilities before final optimization. By pre-filtering routes based on their proximity to refueling stations, restaurants, and recreation areas, the system minimizes the need for time-consuming detours while maintaining productivity.
Data Source
AI summary
A computing system determines, for each of a plurality of routes that respectively connect a starting location to a destination, one or more travel costs associated with travelling from the starting location to the destination, and determines, for each of the plurality of routes, one or more convenience costs associated with an availability of one or more facilities which are located away from the plurality of routes. The computing system further determines, based on the one or more travel costs and the one or more convenience costs, a first route from among the plurality of routes that is associated with a lowest combination of the one or more travel costs and the one or more convenience costs, and provides, to a computing device, route data associated with the first route for controlling one or more vehicle systems associated with navigating a vehicle.