AntMapper: An Ant Colony-Based Map Matching Approach for Trajectory-Based Applications

Many trajectory-based applications require an essential step of mapping raw GPS trajectories onto the digital road network accurately. This task, commonly referred to as map matching, is challenging due to the measurement error of GPS devices in critical environment and the sampling error caused by long sampling intervals. Traditional algorithms focus on either a local or a global perspective to deal with the problem. To further improve the performance, this paper develops a novel map matching model that considers local geometric/topological information and a global similarity measure simultaneously. To accomplish the optimization goal in this complex model, we adopt an ant colony optimization algorithm that mimics the path finding process of ants transporting food in nature. The algorithm utilizes both local heuristic and global fitness to search the global optimum of the model. Experimental results verify that the proposed algorithm is able to provide accurate map matching results within a relatively short execution time.