Waze to Avoid Traffic (Game Theory)
Waze is navigation app built for drivers around the world in order to avoid traffic. It takes in all the real time data of the drives using the app and calculates a route to a desired location that takes the least time. The app is available for smartphone users and lets them report any incidents on the road. Users can report a closed road, places that are under construction, how heavy the traffic is, objects of the roads, and even locations that have police (which can be very helpful sometimes). The app constantly calculates the traffic while the user is driving and updates the driver if there is a shorter or faster route. Waze heavily depends on the users that are driving with the app open, which is the only way it can collect data and make good judgements about traffic on the road in real time.
In order to offer everybody the shortest and fastest route, Waze has a complicated algorithm that calculates the best route for each person’s unique situation. The app also has a feature in which the user can enter an arrival time at the destination and the app will let the user know when leave his or her current location using the average traffic data collected. This feature can be extremely helpful in a city that has heavy traffic such as Los Angeles or New York City. The app tries to improve the traffic conditions for all user so it cannot send all of them to the same place, so it must send some users one way and the others another way to keep a Nash equilibrium in order to reduce everybody’s travel time. If the app sent all the users to the same route, it would increase traffic instead of decreasing it, so it must send different users to different round to decrease everybody’s travel time. However, the app must take into account the non-user that are also on the road at the same time as the users so it estimates the number of drivers that are non-users on the road. It also must consider that the number of non-user changes every second as more people download the app or delete the app. Overall, the app uses Game Theory to create a Nash equilibrium of the traffic using the real time data it receives from all the users.
Links:
http://mashable.com/2013/06/12/what-is-waze/#5zKT3yE7YEqs
https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6078702?hl=en