Predicting Individual Trip Destinations With Artificial Potential Fields.

This paper presents a method to model the intended destination of a subject in real time, based on a trace of position information and prior knowledge of possible destinations. In contrast to most work in this field, it does so without the need for prior analysis of habitual travel patterns. The method models the certainty of each POI by means of a virtual charge, resulting in an artificial potential field that reflects the current estimate of the subject’s intentions. The virtual charges are updated as new information about the subject’s position arrives. We experimentally compare a number of update rules with various parameter settings, showing that it is important to take the distance to a potential destination into account when updating the charge.