Voyager: Route Planner

About Voyager: Route Planner Android App

Voyager helps you plan the optimal (fastest) route to travel to multiple locations. Examples: travellers visiting different sightseeing landmarks, explorers planning road trips, realtors scheduling open house visits, businesses (e.g., couriers/delivery people) optimizing their service routes. For all above cases, this Route Planner is a great choice for you!

How is it different from other similar apps?
I love travelling and exploring new places. One of the biggest problems for me was to find an optimized route to travel to all my planned destinations in a trip. However, there was no a route planing app that satisfied all my requirements. The major issues I had with other apps were: they were not truly free, too complex to use (too many overkill features for me), and required access to my contact book.

So, as an engineer, I decided to build something that my friends and I would like to use for our next trips. With that in mind, my route planner:
1) is completely Free and AD-Free (I don't plan to make even one penny from it);
2) has a clean minimalist design. Simple and very intuitive to use;
3) does NOT require any extra permissions such as accessing your contact book or GPS.

How is it different from Google maps?
Google maps returns directions based on the order you enter your stops. However, this may not be the fastest route for visiting your destinations (assuming order does not matter). This app will return the optimal order to you and ensure it is the fastest route.

How does it work?
Optimal route calculation is done based on data from the Google directions service. The end result will be displayed on a Google map with the direction details. Internet connection is required while doing the math. After calculation, the optimal route will be saved locally and can be accessed offline later. There are three travel modes: driving, walking, and bicycling.

Note for users:
The auto-complete feature is provided by Google Maps API. If it does not work properly, there are three possibilities: 1.The Internet connection is currently not good; 2.The Google Maps API service is currently not working properly; 3.The Google Maps API service (not the actual Google Maps app) has some compatibility issues with your device...For any of the above causes, I can't do anything about it, sorry :(

This app is completely free (no even ads). I would really appreciate if you may take this into account when rating the app :-) The app only uses the free version of the Google Maps API. If you are looking for an app that could handle some serious workload (e.g., 150 stop points in one route), I would suggest you to checkout those commercial (paid) route planners.

Note for computer science graduates:
As we all know, the travelling salesman problem (TSP) is NP-hard. This app uses two methods to calculate the optimal route: 1) a brute force approach when the number of destinations is small, and 2) a set of approximation algorithms when the number is large.