Optimal Meeting Point Selection in Multi-user Pedestrian Navigation

Abstract

People, especially pedestrians often move in an unfamiliar environment and Location based services (LBSs) are found to be very beneficial in unaccustomed environments. It provides guidance to users on their request anytime and anywhere to reach their desired location. Pedestrians arc usually found to be moving in a group of two or three users, meeting with their friends and travel together, etc. but majority of the navigation solutions available in a market are developed for only a single user, and they cannot serve more than one user at a time. This scenario raises a need of an effective system that satisfies the desire of multiple users to travel together. The aim of the research study is therefore, to propose an efficient algorithm for the computation of meeting point (MP) for a group of users; it is a supporting technology for pedestrian navigation system for multi-users. This research study covers a case of a group consist of two users which is a popular case seen. To demonstrate the functionality and testing of the proposed algorithm and the service a communication channel was developed by using a client-server model, where a client was an android based. The proposed algorithm computes a meeting point for two users situated at different locations, and the resultant meeting point minimizes un-necessary detour for everyone.