Route Social Network

When a problem occurs on the road, traffic can become a real nightmare. Even with current resources and technologies, it's very difficult to track down every road problem, such as car accidents, ice or work on the road, natural obstructions and many others. Route Social Network (RSN) was developed with one main objective: let drivers be aware of those problems in time, helping them avoid traffic jams and other unpleasant situations. To achieve these goals, only a smartphone with GPS and Internet/3G access was deemed required. The Android platform was chosen as the initial target of this application, because it has the majority of the smartphones’ market-share. This fact is relevant because the amount of information that flows through the system is related to the number of users that use the system. In fact, RSN depends on crowdsourcing, since drivers have an active role in this system: they can and are encouraged to add problems to the map, comment about existing issues and report solved situations, triggering a social network effect. Preliminary results with real users were very encouraging and confirmed that the more users are connected, better is the flow of information.