Doing dynamic routing for an office

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Hi,

I have had a weird request as a project and that is to build a system where
the clients can put down their office plans into a system and based on where
you are in the buliding (either via defined kiosks or mobile dropdown
filters) it will print out directions on how to get somewhere within that
building. Now, to do it from a fixed location is okay - that could just be a
manual input for each building, but for the variable start point I have no
idea how to do it.

To explain in another way:
* You enter one of the clients offices - you walk up to the touch screen
kiosk and say you are looking to go to Mr Awesomes office. The system then
says, okay - head to the elevators on your right, go to the eighth floor,
turn right walk to the end of the passage and the office is on your left.
This part is easy - the following isnt.
* You are new to the company. You are having a smoke break in a smoking room
and remember you have a meeting. You logon to a mobile site from your phone
(or from your workstation) and you are presented with some filtering options
to pin point where you are (since we cant use GPS here), you then again say
you need to go to Mr Awesomes offices and the system works out that you need
to exit the smoking room left, second passage way right, first left, into
the elevators, up 2 floors, right out the elevators and walk to the end of
the passage and office is on your left.

Any ideas how I could do this easily? The front end isnt a problem, its the
processing behind it actually working out the route. Hope my description is
clear enough and sorry if this has been discussed before - I have no idea
what to search for :)

Thanks
Ian

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Re: Doing dynamic routing for an office

Ian wrote:

> Hi,
>=20
> I have had a weird request as a project and that is to build a system=

> where the clients can put down their office plans into a system and
> based on where you are in the buliding (either via defined kiosks or
> mobile dropdown filters) it will print out directions on how to get
> somewhere within that building. Now, to do it from a fixed location i=
s
> okay - that could just be a manual input for each building, but for
> the variable start point I have no idea how to do it.

I don't know exactly where to go and look, but such mapping systems are=

very common these days (think GPS navigation systems etc), so the
algorithms involved must be equally well known and -documented.=20

/Per

--=20
Per Jessen, Zürich (-1.7°C)


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Re: Doing dynamic routing for an office

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:30 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
> Ian wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have had a weird request as a project and that is to build a system
>> where the clients can put down their office plans into a system and
>> based on where you are in the buliding (either via defined kiosks or
>> mobile dropdown filters) it will print out directions on how to get
>> somewhere within that building. Now, to do it from a fixed location is
>> okay - that could just be a manual input for each building, but for
>> the variable start point I have no idea how to do it.
>
> I don't know exactly where to go and look, but such mapping systems are
> very common these days (think GPS navigation systems etc), so the
> algorithms involved must be equally well known and -documented.
>
> /Per
>
> --
> Per Jessen, Zürich (-1.7°C)
>
>
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> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>

I believe this is the general idea. Various points within the area
(country, building, etc.) that you are mapping are the nodes within
the graph, so you are looking for the best (often, but not necessarily
the shortest) route between two nodes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm

Andrew

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