In this Christmas edition (Happy Holidays everyone!), here is another high level design and implementation problem.
Question:
As you know, Microsoft campus has a shuttle service to take employees from one building to another. The shuttle service is composed of several vehicle types: a minibus (capacity: 12), a minivan (capacity: 6) and a sedan (capacity: 4).
How would you design software to efficiently coordinate the fleet of vehicles and its passengers?
Assumption: Each vehicle has a GPS system.
While on the topic of transportation, I thought I would point out SoundPRT. I actually came across this quite a while back, but was unable to work this into a blog entry until now. As you know, the traffic during rush hour on Redmond campus can be a bit trying. This is a proposed innovative solution to help relieve some of the gridlock in Redmond.
See the link here. You can watch the prototype video here (NOTE: you will need to be a registered Soapbox user).