Maximizing Ridesharing Matches for Dynamic Carpooling

Ubiquitous availability of web-based communications and presence information through portable data and GPS enabled mobile phones makes it possible to envision a system for dynamic carpooling to enhance flexibility in making carpool arrangements successful. However, a critical challenge is to design an algorithm that appropriately matches all travelers (riders and drivers). This paper introduces a dynamic ridesharing system that seeks to locate and optimize as many matches as possible, and then rank them by quality. This is a work-in-progress and current efforts address globally matching travelers so as to minimize the number of passengers without rides.