Using Incremental Direction Searches to Stay Away From COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic causes a world catastrophe, but it also creates many research opportunities at the same time. Because of the COVID-19, people try to keep social distances and avoid the "hotspots" as much as possible. However, it is easier said than done since coronavirus is everywhere. This research uses incremental direction searches to find a "best" route to stay away from COVID-19 when traveling. Incremental direction searches are a progressive search, which finds the next changing direction as the subject moves. It begins the searching as soon as the subject starts moving. Intersection-by-intersection, possible directions away from the current path may be found and immediately presented. This immediate feedback allows the searching to take appropriate actions such as selecting a specific direction or terminating the searching. Preliminary experiment results show the proposed method is effective, but many details need to be filled in before it is put to work.

Keywords

• location-based services
• covid-19
• mobile computing and incremental searches
• coronavirus
• smartphones