Route Planning with Parker Woodward

Ever wondered how route planning apps, well, plan routes? In this episode, we navigate through this fascinating topic, a field as data-driven and systemic as it is magical and compelling. 

Joining us is Parker Woodward, Route Expert and Marketing Director for Route4Me. We discuss how route planning works, the intricacies behind it, and how services like Route4Me perform complex balancing acts between machine learning and user-generated feedback.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:23 Introducing Parker

00:01:54 Becoming a Route Expert

00:04:22 Getting started through smaller startups

00:12:41 Leveraging technology for the greater good

00:14:36 The magic of route planning

00:23:30 Homomorphism and satisfiability

00:31:18 Geocoding

00:33:06 User-generated feedback

00:37:08 Importance of statistics knowledge

00:39:34 The degree of automation in route planning

00:42:54 Inverse decision-making

00:48:47 Operations Research

00:53:42 Dwarf Fortress

00:56:40 US vs European routes

00:57:51 What Route4Me does

01:05:38 Working at Route4Me

01:10:26 Route4Me API

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools

• Route4Me https://route4me.com
• Route4Me API https://route4me.io
• Waze https://www.waze.com
• Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps
• OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org
• MapQuest https://www.mapquest.com
• DeepMind https://deepmind.com

Books

• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Games

• Dwarf Fortress http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Links

• Waymo https://waymo.com/
• Upwork https://www.upwork.com/

Reach out to Parker via email: [email protected]

Catch Parker on LinkedIn

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

Reach out to us via email: [email protected]

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM 

Join the discussion on our Discord

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon