Shady Path Finder

Inspiration

Our inspiration was walking in the sun and sweating too much. There had to be a better way.

What it does

Shady Path Finder finds the best route from point A to B while staying in the shade as much as possible.

How we built it

We built it by generating a graph representation of Berkeley using data from OpenStreetMaps, along with using a 3D LIDAR data set of Berkeley that we used in combination with an API that tells us the current location of the sun so that we can know in real-time what paths (edges of our graph) are shady. From this we built a custom A* search algorithm that uses a custom heuristic that takes into account how shady an edge (path) currently is. With this we are able to produce an optimal path that is both quick and shady.

Challenges we ran into

Building a graph of Berkeley was hard as there is no great way to create vertices. Calculating shadiness quickly also proved difficult, as did tweaking our search algorithm to balance quickness and shadiness. Completing the project in a limited amount of time also proved difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we managed to build this algorithm which uses many different complex parts, from graph generation to shade plotting to searching for an optimal path.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the various APIs we used as well as appreciation for other mapping software.

What's next for Shady Path Finder

Next we would like to implement a web app with a nice front-end so that users can can a Shady Path anytime they need. We also need to improve the speed of our algorithm so that users do not have to wait too long to get their Shady Path.