The Best Route app enables drivers to find the optimum route for their regular journeys. This helps all road users by minimising time spent stuck in traffic. Running on Android devices, Best Route is intended to record trip data over time to provide real world results for the user's specific journeys, instead of relying on inaccurate predictions from route planning software.
For this description, a "journey" is defined as a start and end location, a "route" is the path followed between these points, and a "trip" is one instance of driving a particular route. Best Route does not plan the route or make route suggestions, but instead allows the user to follow their own choice of route, and evaluates the result.
Best Route requires an OpenXC interface, to record trip data directly from the vehicle. For each trip the app identifies the journey and determines whether the route is new or has been followed before. The best route on average is then presented to the user on a map. Displaying the times of the best and worst trips also allows the user to easily identify the optimum time to set out on the journey.
With a bluetooth OpenXC interface, the app will automatically connect and detect trips without any user interaction, running as a background service. The OpenXC data enables Best Route to also record fuel consumption, allowing the user to select the route that requires the least fuel as an alternative to the shortest time.
While the trip is in progress, the user can view fuel economy and trip data as the route is drawn on the map, although no interaction with the app is possible while driving.
By leaving the app monitoring in the background over a longer period of time, the user can try different routes or follow the same route repeatedly, and the trip data will always be recorded. This allows the best route to be easily identified.
The Best Route concept is simple, but the app is intended to make a useful difference to commute times in a congested city such as London.
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