Patent attributes
A ride matching method is disclosed herein. The ride matching method addresses many of the limitations associated with traditional dynamic ride matching applications. The method is unique in its ability to accept trips with schedules that cannot be expressed in terms of a simple recurrence pattern (e.g. Monday thru Friday work schedule). It can handle one-time and occasional trips. It is also distinct in its use of spatial analysis techniques to locate matches. Specifically, the use of a shortest path solver enables the ride matching method to perform a search along the path of a user's trip, in addition to the customary radial search around the endpoints. The shortest path solver is also used to calculate the driving distance between the user and a match. This provides a more accurate measurement than the straight-line distance used by other methods, especially in the presence of barriers.
