nah, didn't really expect it...

[cellio]

It was unlikely, but it would be cool if MapQuest (or some similar service) provided a path-finding option that minimizes the expenditure of kinetic energy. For, y'know, pedestrians who want to take hills into account. The only customization option I see is "avoid highways", which I was going to do anyway. :-)

Oh well. I will just have to rely on my innate knowledge of the topography involved.

Comments

I second that thought.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

That would be too dang cool.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

That would be very nifty when we have snow on the roads, too. I will go out of my way to take a flat road in the snow.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

That would be handy for bicycles, too.

I also want the option of 'I'm willing to take slightly longer in exchange for directions that are easier to follow'.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

In my neck of the woods, the big problem with using MapQuest for walking directions is the abundance of one-way streets. I can more than happily walk down a one-way street, but since MapQuest has to assume I'm driving, it sometimes routes me in the most illogical ways possible. I'd love for someone to develop a MapQuest-like system for pedestrians.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

As long as we are making Mapquest wishes: I wish that it would say when it doesn't know where something is. I set out to a client's office, with Mapquest directions in hand, assuming that when it said "Reach destination" that I would actually be reaching the address I put into the damned thing. Oddly enough, it had me pass her office (buried ina big building with no obvious address on it) down another street to make a series of right hand turns until I "reached" my destination: a big empty field.
Thank you Mapquest. I truly hate you.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about how to do this, once. Minimize some weightable sum of horizontal distance and total vertical distance gained? But then I started trying the corner cases: scale a five-meter cliff, or walk fifteen meters up a thirty-degree grade? Hmm. Maybe some steepness term in there too. I like the "energy expended" idea, if it has a good model somehow.

Scanned topo maps are available online, for lots of the continental U.S. anyway. Seems somebody could parse them into nice heightfield information.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Bah. The Earth is FLAT. It's just that so many people have warped minds.

:)

Avoid highways . . .

[laid.livejournal.com]

Avoid highways avoids only limited access highways. One thing I did notice when I was planning the ride to my parents' house is that the "avoid highways" route is also pretty much the flattest route. Seems that someone took that into account when they built the US highway system back in the day. There are shorter routes from Scranton to Milford, but they have more hills.

Of course, rt 6 follows the Owego Turnpike alot of the way, and that's an old indian trail, but thats another story entirely.