Packsy

Inspiration

We were fresh algorithms alumni savoring our little Winter Trip to London. It was exactly noon when we had stepped out of the British Museum. However, our lunch reservation at The Barbary wasn't until 1:30 PM which was just ~30 minutes away. We hung out at a Starbucks nearby until it was the right time to leave. Some of us don't remember feigning interest in their seasonal drinks, but oh we all did! What if we had a way to take an exploratory path to The Barbary which put us there by 1:30 PM?

What it does

Packsy suggests some of the most seeking paths to travelers who need to get to a given destination with time to spare.

How we built it

We built it using the Google Maps Platform for Web Applications, which allowed us to calculate directions and display paths. We also used the Foursquare Places API to retrieve the points of interest near the user's current location. The back-end path calculations are implemented using the Uniform Cost Search algorithm.

Challenges we ran into

It took a lot of searching and experimenting to find the most relevant points of interest. We moved from one API to next, and eventually settled with Foursquare's Places API. We also spent a lot of time on untangling the dynamics between our Client and Server.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're actually proud of getting our back-end algorithm to work.

What we learned

We learnt a lot about getting comfortable with unknown APIs in a relatively less amount of time.

What's next for Packsy

In terms of future goals, we want our users to be able to have more autonomy in choosing the places they want to explore on their way. We also want them to be able to specify the mode of transport, since for now, Packsy only works with driving. We also, obviously, want to make our UI wayyyy better and usable.