Slurpee Route Optimization

Welcome to the Slurpee route optimization application. The locations on the map are 7-Eleven stores in the Vancouver area. The objective is to plan a route to each of the stores to minimize your travel distance and/or time. You arrange the order of your route by dragging the tiles under the map which are ordered left-to=right then top-to-bottom. The first and last tiles cannot be dragged and are not targets for dropping.

At any time you can press the Map Route and Calculate button and your current route will be plotted on the map. Just below the button your total distance and trip duration will appear along with each step in the route. How short a route can you find?

This is an example of the Travelling Salesman Problem.

Technical Details to Follow

Credits

• The overall structure of the program comes from the examples provided as part of the Google Maps API V3 documentation. Thanks to Google for their outstanding Maps application and their many contributions to making the web highly interactive.
• The UI tab and sortable tiles make use of JQuery UI widgets. Touch support is provided by the Touch Punch hack.
• The technique to work around the waypoint limits in Google maps is based on this posting. lemonharpy.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/working-around-8-waypoint-limit-in-google-maps-directions-api/ To these techniques I have added a method to correctly serialize the asynchronous responses for the Google directions services
• I've lost track of where I learned the technique of using the numeric prototype to include a method to convert seconds to the hh>mm:ss format but thanks to the poster whose identity has long ago faded.

Permissions

Any intellectual property contained in the application belonging to Will Hopkins or Aureus Arcus Advising Ltd. is licensed under the Creative Commons as follows:

Route Optimization Map Application by Will Hopkins and Aureus Arcus Advising Ltd. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

If you re-use all or any portions of the application the software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non infringement. In no event are the authors or copyright holders liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.