Probabilistic Modeling of Erroneous Human Response to In-Vehicle Route Guidance Systems: A First Look

An integral component of (in-vehicle) navigation systems is the determination of optimal routes to the desired destination. An implicit assumption in the underlying algorithms is that people do not make mistakes when following the prescribed routes. This is, however, not always consistent with reality, especially when driving in unfamiliar environments. This article presents a first look at the possibility of mistakes when driving. This possibility is formalized in a Markov decision process. It is demonstrated that quite paradoxical situations can occur when accounting for mistakes. As the most interesting—but perhaps extreme—example, we have shown that under certain conditions, it is no longer optimal to recommend drivers to take the shortest route. Instead, a longer route (in certain cases even the longest!) becomes optimal. Numerical results are provided throughout the article to reveal the fundamental properties of this problem.