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SALT LAKE CITY — People always talk about enjoying the journey, but online GPS and mapping tools haven’t taken that to heart, offering only the quickest, least congested or cheapest routes. Yahoo! is looking to change that, looking for the most beautiful routes as well.
Using metadata from the tech conglomerate’s photo sharing site, Flickr, along with approximately 3,300 votes, Yahoo! labs and University of Torino researcher Rossano Schifanella developed an algorithm that would point drivers toward the most scenic route. The team intends to use the algorithm to create an app in the near future.
Yahoo! focused its study on the London and Boston areas, culling through millions of photos from the area and geotags to determine what locations are most pleasant. Using the crowdsourced scores based on the photos of a location, researchers were able to determine which locations were associated with happiness, quiet and beauty. Often, researchers noted, beauty was associated with peaceful, historical and distinctive places.
While the feature would be directed toward tourists, it could also be useful for residents looking for scenery or pleasant urban locations near them.
Personalization approaches might partly account for the subjectivity of urban experience by, for example, tailoring recommended paths to a user's past visits.
–Yahoo! labs study
While scenic routes are notoriously long, the algorithm also takes into account brevity. On average, Yahoo! reported, the scenic routes recommended by its algorithm are 12 percent longer than the quickest route and were considered “half-a-day touristic experiences” or 12 hours.
For more special experiences, however, researchers admitted more time is often required. On average, these vantages required a 60 percent increase in travel time. Unsurprisingly, when asked to rate a location, people were often conflicted about crowds, which could help explain the longer travel time required to reach some destinations.
Because beauty is subjective, and it may change based on the weather, time of day or any other number of factors, the study also noted the need for customization.
“Personalization approaches might partly account for the subjectivity of urban experience by, for example, tailoring recommended paths to a user’s past visits,” the study said.
No prospective date for the app has been released.
