How London’s Taxi Drivers Navigate the City Without GPS
Drivers of the city’s black cabs can teach satellite navigation apps a few things about how to plan the most efficient route, a new study says.
A black cab in action in London.
Photo: Robert Michael/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa via Getty Images
Taxi drivers in London are renowned for their ability to navigate the city’s complex street network relying almost solely on their memory. The rest of us, for the most part, depend on navigation apps.
Both get people to their destinations, but a new study looking at how cab drivers plan their routes suggests that human navigators may be more strategic than their artificially intelligent counterparts. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could potentially help train AI algorithms to work more efficiently and use less energy, the researchers say.