xMapMatch 2 : Timestamp at track position

[Bernd Welter]

Hi there,

recently I've been challenged by some partner who evaluates our map matching (2) / Developer API.

I see one problem with your current API - you can only pass coordinates without time. It is a problem, because based on time there are different road restrictions, and also some road incidents could occur. For us, that functionalit is mainly for matching truck path to road, for visualization, but also for the reverse route, post factum, and also to calculate the toll for that route (which unfortunately needs to be done with 2 other requests in you API as I see concepts/recalculate-toll-and-emissions). So we have thousands of points, and based on that we calculate the toll. Rather a feature, not very common, but available, so If I would pass these thousands of points to routing...

I know that we used a Timestamp even as a mandatory property of a track position. Can I get some feedback about what a user is supposed to expect from the xMapMatch2/DEV approach?

Thanks,
Bernd

[Bernd Welter]

Here's the feedback I received from DEV Frank O.:

• There's only a minimal benefit we see in the usage of timestamps in the map matching process, e.g. if two roads are adjacent:
  • one with a time dependent blocking
  • one without a time dependent blocking
  But if the vehicle has taken the blocked road we would detect that anyway.
• In the current implementation we don not consider vehicle profile properties into the matching process. Only if this is the case it would have an impact to consider timestamps.
• There's probably a misunderstanding in the reconstruction process: you would not have to forward the many (x,y) coordinates to the routing API: There's a dedicated mechanism available
  • First the map matcher creates one or several "partial tracks" which are identified by a RouteId. WIthin such a stored RouteID the geometry of such a partial route is fixed.
  • Then you forward the routeID to the routing API to gather the usual KPIs such as EMission or Toll for the paths. At this stage you could refer to an individual vehicle profile.
  • Fort the PTV Developer.MapMatching API here is a technical concept for the reconstruction.

If you have any further question feel free to add it here!

Bernd