Carpool Scheduler

Carpool Scheduler

This project aims to create a carpooling Android application with a server that automatically schedules the rides overnight. The project’s goal is to group commuters sharing similar routes in order to reduce the usage of natural resources, decrease traffic and parking congestions, as well as vehicle emissions and pollution levels. This is also beneficial for the users themselves as it reduces their fuel and car maintenance costs.

The result was a client-server application in which the client was a user friendly Android application that allows users to specify their schedules and view their respective rides and drivers after the scheduler has assigned the routes. The server consisted of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) that receives user requests and runs overnight, it makes use of Google Maps to calculate a fair and efficient route for all the users and sends back the results. The calculation took into account the users origin and destination, as well as their departure and arrival time windows. It also accounted for fairness, which means rotating drivers over the week so that everybody gets to be a passenger sometime. The algorithm was similarly able to include user preferences such as smoking, age range, and preferred car capacity.

The project was successful and resulted in two publications [1], [2] as well as gaining the best poster award at the American University of Beirut FEA Student and Alumni Conference, year 2013.

Below are some images from the Android user application.

References

  • C. M. Boukhater, O. Dakroub, F. Lahoud, M. Awad, and H. Artail, “An intelligent and fair GA carpooling scheduler as a social solution for greener transportation,” in Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON), 2014 17th IEEE, 2014, pp. 182–186. 

    @inproceedings{boukhater2014intelligent,
  title = {An intelligent and fair GA carpooling scheduler as a social solution for greener transportation},
  author = {Boukhater, Carl Michael and Dakroub, Oussama and Lahoud, Fayez and Awad, Mariette and Artail, Hassan},
  booktitle = {Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON), 2014 17th IEEE},
  pages = {182--186},
  year = {2014},
  organization = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1109/MELCON.2014.6820528}
}

  • O. Dakroub, C. M. Boukhater, F. Lahoud, M. Awad, and H. Artail, “An intelligent carpooling app for a green social solution to traffic and parking congestions,” in Intelligent Transportation Systems-(ITSC), 2013 16th International IEEE Conference on, 2013, pp. 2401–2408. 

    @inproceedings{dakroub2013intelligent,
  title = {An intelligent carpooling app for a green social solution to traffic and parking congestions},
  author = {Dakroub, Oussama and Boukhater, Carl Michael and Lahoud, Fayez and Awad, Mariette and Artail, Hassan},
  booktitle = {Intelligent Transportation Systems-(ITSC), 2013 16th International IEEE Conference on},
  pages = {2401--2408},
  year = {2013},
  organization = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1109/ITSC.2013.6728586}
}