https://github.com/Badwater-Apps/intelli-trip-planner

The grand goal of this project is to build a web app that can intelligently recommend road trip routes, given a number of criteria, such as trip duration, budget, region of interest, must-visit destinations, lodging places, time spent at a given location, etc.

The grand goal is glorious but difficult to implement, requiring front-end website (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), back-end database and computation, and even machine learning.

Hence, we break down it into smaller steps.

• The first baby step is to find the fastest route, given n destinations, powered by JavaScript and Google Maps API. Then, extend the algorithm to find the shortest route, given n destinations.
• The next step is to create a small database of 10-20 attractions, so that we can use it to develop core algorithms that can recommend road trip routes. The area around Las Vegas is an ideal choice. There are many natural attractions within ~4 hours of driving, including Grand Canyon National Park, Death Valley National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Horseshoe Bend, and Antelope Canyon.
• Develop core algorithms that can intelligently recommend road trip routes.
• In the meantime, design and implement the big database of attractions. We should further break this huge task down to smaller tasks. For example, a database of all National Parks in the US will be a good starting point, given there are only 58 of them. Then we can further include more attractions, and even in other countries. Because the world is huge, to save us some time, let's try to include attractions that are meaningful to road trips.
• In the meantime, design the UI of the web app.

The app is currently hosted at: https://app.skylerdong.com/route-optimization/

Shortly, it will be hosted at: https://badwater-apps.github.io/.

This is a work in progress.

If you are interested in contributing to this project, you are welcome to reach out.

To contribute to this project, we follow a rather standard approach of open-source software development, such as: https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions

Click here to see our contributors.

October 27, 2019