30 June 2021
Have you ever needed to meet up with a group of people who come from different parts of the country? And have you wondered what the best place to meet up is? That's a tricky problem that the company MobilityLabel is trying to solve.
They have developed a calculator called Roudle that calculates the optimal place to meet based on travel time, travel costs and CO2 emissions. The input of the system consists of everyone's starting point and how they travel (public transport or car). The result is a location with the lowest total travel time for the entire group. The midpoint is also calculated, as an alternative solution.
9to5 software has developed a website and backend for Roudle. On the site users can enter everyone's starting location and their means of transport. The best solutions are then calculated with the tool through our backend. This calculation can sometimes take up to 20 seconds. Longer load times are usually a problem at the user side, so we've used web sockets to keep users from timing out. While the tool calculates the solution, the socket passes information to the browser. To ensure that the user doesn't experience the calculations as a server hangup, we've added a nice animation.
After the calculations have completed, the user is presented with various solutions. They choose the solution that matches their desires and can then choose from various meeting points. Think of restaurants, co-working spaces or hotels. When a point is chosen and selected, the result can be shared with others via a link. Via this link, other users can see the chosen meeting point and immediately know where to go.
Try the site at demo.slimafspreken.nl.
