ErrandRunner
Chris Corcoran
December 10, 2010
Attach:corcoran_c_errand_runner.pdf
Overview
You love stuff but hate shopping for it. It's the holidays, the in-laws are here and the kids out of control. You don't have time to be running errands kid! With Errand Runner you can get someone else to run your errands for you! Just enter a start location, an end location and a bounty. Then Boom! Just like that errand runner will find someone to run your errand for you!
Screenshot
Concepts Demonstrated
A* Search - A heuristic driven A* search is done of the states of runners to determine which checkins location are the optimal path. Bayesian network - This is used to determine the probability of a runner taking the route given their history of checkins in the areas. Procrastination - Its bad, don't do it.
Innovation
What makes Errand Runner unique is that is leverages Foursquare checkin data published on Twitter to model potential users. This means anyone and everyone who publishes a checkin on Twitter could be offered an errand to run and earn money for doing it. This very subtle crowd sourcing of Foursquare users to run errands is the first implementation of its kind, and its totally boss.
Technology Used Block Diagram
Evaluation of Results
So far no errands have actually been run, this is because the site is not actively soliciting runners. Getting errands done is also a bit tricky, currently the probability an errand will get done is based on the number of times a user has broadcast their checkin, as the data set is fresh as of this morning the probability is very low.
Additional Remarks
This software is like wicked smaht.