Route-Choice Strategies for Shared-Ride Trip Planning in Geosensor-Networks

Shared-ride trip planning is one potential field of application within the research domain of geosensor-networks. Such a system is envisioned to provide people in need of transportation (clients) and transportation providers (hosts) with an ad-hoc, peer-to-peer communication, positioning, and planning infrastructure within an urban environment. By doing this, shared-ride trip planning can contribute to increasing the efficiency of contemporary transportation networks. Hence shared-ride trip planning can help reduce traffic load and environmental stress. Route choice plays an important role within such a system, as it is highly dynamic in terms of transportation and communication network topology. As a result, clients might not be able to get a ride from start to destination right away. This leaves the client with a risky decision: which of all currently reachable locations is the most promising one for the client’s ongoing trip? This thesis deals with the problem stated above. Using heuristics, a strategy is proposed in order to enable free route choice and limit trip duration. The derived strategy is implemented within an agent-based computer simulation and the results are analyzed and compared to previous work.