How Does Google Maps Find the Shortest Route? Understanding Graphs and Dijkstra's Algorithm
From a university classroom to real world navigation: exploring how a fundamental computer science algorithm connects to the technology we use every day. Introduction: Have You Ever Wondered How Google Maps Finds Your Route? Imagine that you need to travel from your home to a hospital in a busy city. You open Google Maps, enter your destination and within seconds it presents you with possible routes, estimated travel times and directions. Have you ever stopped to wonder what happens behind the scenes? How does a computer understand thousands of roads? How does it compare different routes? And how can it decide which route is the shortest or fastest? These questions connect to an important area of computer science: Data Structures and Algorithms . Recently, I worked on a Smart City project that involved representing locations as a graph and exploring algorithms for finding routes between them. One of the important concepts in this area is Dijkstra's algorithm, which solves shortes...