Recently, I have been reading a lot of articles about quick
App development and how we can design apps and put it in the App Store or on
Google Play very fast. Well today, I am going to write about an App which is
years in the making.
We all know that Navigation problems and Navigation Apps are
hard. The reason being the sheer volume of data that is required to come up
with a good Navigation App. We all know that Google took years to develop its
Google Maps App and when Apple tried to do something similar in months they
failed miserably. Even though there are so many Navigation Apps which try to
solve this problem, I feel the Navigation system in place is still broken.
Now let’s dwell into the real problem with the current navigation
Apps. Let’s say you want to go from A to B. The current navigation apps would
take a path snapshot “at that time instant” from A to B giving you the best
paths based on distance and in some Apps traffic as well. So you get a path say
from A -> X -> Y ->B. This is what Google Maps or any other navigation
App will give you. Now, the path from X -> Y or from Y -> B is not based on
what time you reach X or Y but on the time you leave A. This is why the current
Navigation system is still broken.
At Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at USC, Prof.Cyrus Shahabi and Associate Director Dr. Ugur Demiryurek and the entire team at
IMSC are really aimed to solve this Navigation and traffic problem. Their
solution is ClearPath. ClearPath is based on years of traffic data and
research. The data for Clearpath not only comes from the road networks but also
from live real traffic data which are pulled from the LA Metro. So there is
previous data about traffic and there is current data as well. Now when you say
you want to go from A to B in ClearPath, first it takes into account the time
taken to reach A -> X and X -> Y and runs spatio-temporal algorithms (based
on years of research) to do pattern recognition and analysis at each X and Y to
give a more accurate path which saves time. Traffic changes as you drive. It
works on an algorithm that accounts for all these changes before you even start
your commute. Results show that ClearPath beats all the current Navigation Apps
hands down on time and accuracy of paths. Hence, ClearPath tagline reads, "The right path, all the time!". It is featured on Android
Apps, Viterbi
Blog and Stevens
Blog and Voanews.
ClearPath is an App which has the potential to change the future.
It is a very excellent example of something which is going to be commercially
successful coming out from research.
