Computational framework for subjective preference based route selection in pedestrian navigation system

Though route planning for navigation systems in the context of driving cars and other vehicles are becoming common with the introduction of GPS, current systems generally provide optimal routes as the shortest route based on travel time or travel distance. Route selection according to driver´s subjective preference is still a topic of research. With the recent development of powerful technologies, the need for the development of navigation systems to help pedestrians in an unknown environment is also growing. But unlike vehicle user´s, pedestrians form a more heterogeneous group with varieties of needs and personal preferences. Route selection for pedestrian navigation system according to user´s subjective preference is more difficult. In this work a computational framework based on soft computing techniques for processing the semantic content of user´s diverse subjective preference, for matching them to the objective characteristics of the road and the environment and for generating a set of near optimal alternate walking routes is proposed and a pilot study has been done to test its feasibility.