ROAM: A Fundamental Routing Query on Road Networks with Efficiency

Novel road-network applications often recommend a moving object (e.g., a vehicle) about interesting services or tasks on its way to a destination. A taxi-sharing system, for instance, suggests a new passenger to a taxi while it is serving another one. The traveling cost is then shared among these passengers. A fundamental query is: given two nodes s s and t t , and an area \mathcal {A} A on road network graph \mathcal {G} G , is there a "good" route (e.g., short enough path) P P from s s to t t that crosses \mathcal {A} A in \mathcal {G} G ? In a taxi-sharing system, s s and t t can be a taxi's current and destined locations, and