Detouree

Inspiration

Our app was born out of the frustration we've experience due to UMD's never ending construction. We wanted to make a tool that empowered students to navigate the campus quickly despite constant changes to routes.

What it does

With Detouree, you can easily reach your classes on time with optimized routes, while contributing to our crowd sourced data on current construction zones and obstacles. You can mark areas that are blocked off and detouree will provide you and other users new paths that avoid the slowdowns. Routes are tailor made for your class schedule and the buildings you want to visit.

How we built it

The program is built in two key parts. The back-end comprises of a comprehensive database schema holding up-to-date route metadata, currently blocked zones on the map, and cached user data. The front-end of the app displays the map along with the custom-made routes accounting for all avoidance zones together. The front end enables you to draw out new avoidance zones that update the database and user routes. Connecting the two is a special route finding algorithm that finds the optimal route avoiding all slowdowns.

Challenges we ran into

It was the first time some of our teammates programmed in JavaScript and made use of CockroachDB. Twilio provided unique challenges, proving an unreliable source of notifications. As well, implementing the route finding algorithm for multiple avoidance zones provided a unique set of challenges, forcing us through multiple development cycles before finding a satisfactory implementation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to produce rich, eyecatching visuals for our optimized routes. Despite the unreliability of the algorithm's path techniques and the non-deterministic data outputs, our approach mitigated these hinderances and produced crystal-clear directions on the map. We were able to effectively create useful avenues of contribution even for team members working with the tech-stack for the first time.

What we learned

We were able to pick up fundamental Geospatial Computing concepts and routing algorithic techniques, guarentees, and difficulties. We gained a further understanding and appreciation for the nuances of CockroachDB and building integrated JS application.

What's next for Detouree

Detouree should be expanded to more universities, more commonplace road scenarios, and more varieties of barricades. We want to be able to tackle issues like crowded footpaths, traffic patterns, protests, and other unexpected or emergency stoppages.

Built With

• cockroach-db
• geojson
• google-maps
• here-api
• javascript
• next.js
• react.js
• turf
• twilio