GPSView: A scenic driving route planner

  • Authors:

  • Yan-Tao Zheng;Shuicheng Yan;Zheng-Jun Zha;Yiqun Li;Xiangdong Zhou;Tat-Seng Chua;Ramesh Jain

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute for Infocomm Research, Fusionopolis Way, Singapore;National University of Singapore, Singapore;National University of Singapore, Singapore;Institute for Infocomm Research, Fusionopolis Way, Singapore;Fudan University;National University of Singapore, Singapore;University of California, Irvine, CA

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMCCAP)
  • Year:
  • 2013

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

GPS devices have been widely used in automobiles to compute navigation routes to destinations. The generated driving route targets the minimal traveling distance, but neglects the sightseeing experience of the route. In this study, we propose an augmented GPS navigation system, GPSView, to incorporate a scenic factor into the routing. The goal of GPSView is to plan a driving route with scenery and sightseeing qualities, and therefore allow travelers to enjoy sightseeing on the drive. To do so, we first build a database of scenic roadways with vistas of landscapes and sights along the roadside. Specifically, we adapt an attention-based approach to exploit community-contributed GPS-tagged photos on the Internet to discover scenic roadways. The premise is: a multitude of photos taken along a roadway imply that this roadway is probably appealing and catches the public's attention. By analyzing the geospatial distribution of photos, the proposed approach discovers the roadside sight spots, or Points-Of-Interest (POIs), which have good scenic qualities and visibility to travelers on the roadway. Finally, we formulate scenic driving route planning as an optimization task towards the best trade-off between sightseeing experience and traveling distance. Testing in the northern California area shows that the proposed system can deliver promising results.