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RouteFinda Application
Find routes by using vector road network data.
RouteFinda Applications
Graticule provides RouteFinda applications for finding the shortest or fastest route by road between two or more given locations. The state-of-the-art RouteFinda technology is multi-threaded, exploits multi-core processor technology and gives very high levels of performance on a given platform. Times for finding the shortest or fastest routes depend on many factors but RouteFinda let you exploit available computing resources to the full. As a result, the RouteFinda application can provide quick results even when finding routes through a dense network of city streets or an extensive network of roads across countries or continents. The RouteFinda application is generic and flexible. It can be used with large-, medium- or small-scale vector road data. It captures the attributes of each road segment such as street name, county and postcode if the data is available.
The accuracy of computing routes depends chiefly on the choice of vector road data. Large-scale data of vector street networks at 1/10,000 to 1/20,000 contain the most detail and consequently give the most accurate results. But the welter of detail means that it takes longer to find a route than when using medium-scale vector road data. Vector road data in the UK at scales of from 1/200,000 to 1/250,000 show the road network in less detail. For example, road atlas data does not include streets in cities, lanes and tracks. It therefore gives much faster results for finding the shortest or fastest route. So choice of type and scale of vector map data of road networks in critically important when designing custom solutions.
The most convenient way of specifying the locations of the origin (or start) and destination (or end) for route finding is to use geo-coded postcode data in the UK. You enter the full postcode (i.e. postcode unit) of the origin and the destination. The geo-coded postcode data forms a look-up table and provides the Easting and Northing co-ordinates in the National Grids of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of locations of the origin and destination. The RouteFinda application will compute the shortest or fastest routes by the chosen vector road map data between the two given locations. The fastest route is based upon average speed of vehicle travel on each segment of the chosen road network.
Output from the RouteFinda application is a linked list of nodes forming the chosen shortest or fastest route. By drawing the linked list on a semi-transparent map overlay, the chosen route appears as highlighted route on a raster map on a computer display. By transforming the linked-list, you can get a series of instructions as text to guide you through the chosen route. You can output the instructions on a computer display as a sequence of instructions for following a route. You can in principle output the instructions through voice simulation software so you can listen to spoken instructions for use when driving. These instructions can be linked to data from satellite global positioning system receivers so that a driver knows where he is and which instruction to follow at any time.
The RouteFinda application offers significant benefits for drivers planning or on a journey. It is being used in diverse businesses including vehicle freight logistics, freight transport, coach, taxi and home delivery businesses, emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance services, web sites offering route planning services, road distances and off-peak drive-times, fast-food home delivery, scheduling of service engineers for domestic appliances, vehicle route planning and scheduling with time windows, etc. RouteFinda software has been integrated with business models supporting call centre operatives for creating automatic quotations for freight shipments by road, coach and car services and taxis. Route finding forms an important part of planning trips for businessmen, service engineers, commercial travellers and others such as school pupils, pickup services, hospital and home care services. Graticule's RouteFinda application offers a flexible, efficient, consistent and high-performance way of determining the shortest or fastest routes by road between a given starting and ending location.
The RouteFinda application runs on mobile devices, note-books, laptops, desktops and server platforms running either Micrsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista or Windows CE or Linux operating environments. As it is a multi-threading software application, it can fully exploit multi-core processors to offer very high levels of service to many simultaneous users and provide fast, accurate and consistent results.
Please get in touch if you would like to find out more about how RouteFinda technology can help to improve the efficiency of your business activities.