RU2600864C1 - Automated method for searching transportation services and automated system to implement such method - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: computer engineering.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to computer engineering and can be used, for example, as a method for searching transportation services by receiving and converting information equivalent sequences of computer codes and automated system for its implementation. Improvement of the methods for searching transportation services is achieved by an automated method for tracking deliveries which involves basic and additional requests to the source of information. Said technical result is also achieved by means of an automated system for the implementation of the proposed method consisting of interconnected units: unit for receiving requests from a user, data storage and generation unit, unit for sending and receiving data to/from information source or sources and unit for sending the information to the user.

EFFECT: invention aims at perfecting the methods for searching transportation services and achieving the technical result in the form of finding a cheaper transportation service.

6 cl, 5 dwg

Description

The invention relates to computer technology and can be used, for example, as a method of searching for transportation by obtaining and converting equivalent information to sequences of computer codes and an automated complex for its implementation.

There is a method of searching for tickets in which the buyer, wishing to purchase an air ticket, selects the flight direction, indicates the desired date of flight and finally selects the air ticket for a specific flight [patent RU 2174709].

Also known is a system that provides a unified interface to various Global Distribution Systems [patent RU 2222825], and a system that allows a wide range of users to access ticket reservations through terminals [patent RU 2365997].

Automated systems are also known that combine flight options offered by several sellers using the above technologies in a single meta-search issue: www.aviasales.ru, www.skyscanner.com, www.kayak.com and others.

The imperfection of the known solutions lies in the insufficient quality of the automatic search for possible flight options.

The problem solved by the invention is to improve the search for transportation with the achievement of a technical result in the form of a positive probability of providing the user with information about cheaper transportation options. The specified technical result is also achieved using an automated system for implementing the proposed method. Their use in the search and display of information on air transportation allows you to improve the search - with a positive probability to present the user with information about transportation at a lower price.

For convenience and an unambiguous understanding, it is advisable to give decipherments and definitions of the designations, symbols and / or terms used below.

Information - a collection of all kinds of data with the ability to convert and split them into minimal elements, for example, yes and / or no.

Computer code - an electromagnetic signal transmitted through physical communication channels and / or stored on tangible media, equivalent to a minimum information element.

A sequence and / or set of computer codes is a set of electromagnetic signals transmitted through physical communication channels and / or stored on material media, and equivalent to arrays of information of various sizes.

The equivalence of a sequence and / or a combination of computer codes to an information array is their one-to-one display, that is, the technical possibility of their one-to-one conversion by means of an appropriate device.

In the future, unless otherwise specified, operations of the claimed method with information are operations with sequences of equivalent computer codes.

Internal information storage - a device or part of a device that is part of the system that implements the system, which stores and issues information upon request in the form of sequences of computer codes equivalent to it.

User - an automated system or person oriented to use information about transportation, including in the form of an equivalent set of computer codes, requesting it, analyzing it, and possibly performing any actions with it.

User request - a user’s request to a system that implements the invention, in which the user uses the search details.

Search attribute - a lot of information reflecting the requirement for transportation. Examples include departure and return dates, number of passengers, city or terminal of departure and arrival.

GDS - Global Distribution System. There are several main GDSs in the world: 5 international (Saber, Amadeus, Galileo, Worldspan, Gabriel - all aviation) and 3 Russian (Siren 2000, Siren 2,3 - aviation and Express - railway), each of which has its own interface.

The source of information is an automated system that, upon receipt of a request for information on available transportation options for obtaining information, requested information. Examples of a source of information include: GDS, a metasearch ticket system, a ticket agency server, or its own internal repository of information.

Terminal - a physical place of the beginning or end of transportation, for example, an airport, train station, bus station, berth. In one city there can be several terminals, and the source of information, as a rule, gives out the search details “departure city”, “arrival city” possible options from all terminals of the required mode of transport in the specified city, and also shows options with a change with a terminal change .

Departure / arrival point - used for convenience, the general name of the search details is “departure / arrival terminal” or “departure / arrival city”.

Information request is the appeal of a system that implements the invention to a source of information in which search details are used.

The basic request is the appeal of the system that implements the invention to the source of information, which uses the search details from the user’s request.

Base price - the best price of transportation received when performing a basic request for information.

The final price is the best transportation price obtained after performing the operations of the method.

Corresponding transportation options - information on transportation that matches the search details.

Designations:

P ₀ - base price

P _min - the total price

I - the number of additional requests automatically generated and sent to the source of information, determined in each specific implementation

Res = P ₀ -P _min - for each specific search

V Res is the probability of obtaining Res> 0.

Thus, the achievement of the technical result is to obtain V Res> 0 (followed by the presentation of information to the user).

As brief information revealing the essence of the invention, it should be noted that the achieved technical result is provided using the proposed automated method by which basic and additional requests to the source of information are produced, while in additional requests point A is indicated as the point of departure, and points of arrival - arrival points of routes from point B. After that, transit traffic through point B is selected from the received options and presented to the user along with the option mi for a basic request.

The technical result is also achieved in the modification of the claimed method when selecting arrival points in additional requests, depending on additional information about the points of arrival.

Also, the technical result is achieved by modifying the claimed method when the user requests a round-trip transportation by fulfilling a round-trip transportation request from the source of information, as well as basic and additional requests separately for the “there” direction and the “back” direction, followed by all possible pairs from the received “one-way” transportation options and presenting them to the user along with the options from the “round-trip” request.

The achieved technical result is also provided with the help of an automated complex for performing the operations of the claimed method according to claim 1. The complex is composed of interconnected blocks: a block for receiving requests from a BPZ user; block of data storage and BHP construction; a block for sending and receiving data to / from a source or sources of BOPII information; block issuing information to the user BVIP. In this case, the user is connected to the BCH via one or more physical media, the BCH is connected to the BHP, the BHP is connected to the BVIP and interconnected with the BOPII, to which one or more sources of information are interconnected through one or more physical media, and the BVIP is connected to the user through one or multiple physical media. The order of interaction of these blocks is defined in each specific implementation of the complex.

The technical result is also achieved by modifying the automated complex, in which the BOPII is made with the possibility of transmitting information to the source, BHP - processing, and the BPZ - receiving from the user a transportation order containing information about the selected option, passengers and payment details. BOPII is also connected to BVIP and they are made accordingly with the possibility of receiving from the source of information and transferring to the user the results of order processing.

The technical result is also achieved by modifying the automated complex, in which the communication channels to the end device of the user are included in the BPZ and BVIP.

When presenting information confirming the possibility of carrying out the invention, it is advisable to describe the proposed method in more detail. When describing the method, it is impractical to dwell in detail on the operations known from published sources and the existing well-known practice, in particular, obtaining information about the route network, presenting information to the user, including in the form of an equivalent set of computer codes, or obtaining information from its sources.

A detailed description of the claimed method and device, it is advisable to explain using the drawings, which schematically depict:

FIG. 1. The graph of the average value of the values of V Res from the choice of I.

FIG. 2. The graph of the dependence of the average value of the values of V Res on the choice of I in the modification of the method when choosing arrival points in additional requests depending on the statistics of previous requests.

FIG. 3. The graph of the dependence of the average value of V Res on the choice of I in the modification of the method for round-trip transportation requests.

FIG. 4. The structural block diagram of an automated complex that implements a search method at the user's request for transportation from point A to point B.

FIG. 5. The functioning scheme of an automated complex that implements a search at the request of a transportation user from point A to point B.

Graphs are obtained by graphical display of experimentally obtained values.

In FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 are indicated:

1. User.

2. A block for receiving requests from a BPZ user.

3. Physical storage media.

4. Connecting the user to the BPC through one or more physical storage media.

5. Connection of BPZ to BHP.

6. Data storage and BHP construction block.

7. The relationship of BHP and BOPII.

8. Block sending and receiving data to / from the source / sources of BOPII information.

9. The relationship of BOPII and the source of information.

10. Physical storage media.

11. Source or, if there are several, sources of information.

12. Connecting the BPZ to BVIP.

13. The unit for issuing information to the BVIP user.

14. Connect BVIP to the user.

15. Physical storage media.

16. Direction of user request.

17. Direction of a sequence of computer codes equivalent to a user request.

18. Direction of the transmitted sequence of computer codes equivalent to the basic request.

19. Direction of the transmitted basic request to the source or sources of information.

20. Direction of transportation options corresponding to the basic request.

21. Direction of the transmitted sequence of computer codes equivalent to the transportation options corresponding to the basic request.

22. The direction of the transmitted sequence of computer codes equivalent to additional requests.

23. Direction of transmitted additional requests to the source or sources of information.

24. Forwarding information on transportation options corresponding to additional requests.

25. Direction of a sequence of computer codes equivalent to transportation options corresponding to additional requests.

26. The direction of the transmitted sequence of computer codes equivalent to the transportation options to be presented to the user.

27. Direction of transportation options to be presented to the user.

It is advisable to describe in detail the predominantly distinctive significant features of the operations of the proposed method, namely that first, using the search details received from the user, including departure and arrival points A and B, they make a basic request to the source of information and receive information about available transportation options. Then additional requests are made to the source of information, while in additional requests point A is indicated as the departure point, and points of arrival of routes from point B are indicated as the point of arrival. Information about the route network is publicly available, and the methods for obtaining it are well-known: for example, it can be get on airport sites or from the railway scheme. After that, transit transportation through point B is selected from the received options, they are added to the options for the basic request, and then the set of options thus obtained is presented to the user. If the user selects any of the options received as a result of additional requests, he will simply interrupt the transportation or trip to point B, where he needs to. The achievement of the technical result was proved experimentally and is reflected in the graph of FIG. 1. Measurements of prices for air tickets to Moscow were carried out, which were searched by users of the portal www.tickets-sale.ru. They were compared with prices for transit traffic through Moscow from departure cities. In total, 76 of the most popular departure cities were investigated, and the number of final destination was chosen from 1 to 312 (flights from Moscow to 312 cities were chosen). The increase in the probability of finding a lower price is logical: if you chose one destination, it averaged 0.27%, if you chose all possible destinations, it averaged 12.6%.

The technical result is also achieved by modifying the claimed method when choosing arrival points in additional requests depending on additional information about the points of arrival of routes from point B. Examples of additional information are: statistics of previous searches, frequency of flights to them or distance from them to point B , the average or minimum price of transportation to them from point B. The dependence is, respectively, in determining the parameter for each destination and selecting all points with the best result for the first example and the best destinations for this parameter for everyone else. In the examples given, the parameters will be: 1 or 0 depending on whether the result was achieved, in the first example and the numerical values of the indicated values - in the remaining examples, the specific dependence is determined in each specific implementation of the method. The achievement of the technical result is proved experimentally for the first and the combination of the second / third of the above examples. The experimental conditions were similar to the previous one. In this case, in the first case, destinations were selected for which a price reduction had already been shown in the previous experiment (on average, for points of departure at which a lower price was found, the number of such destinations was 2.65, and the maximum was 6), and for departure points for which such a decrease was not shown, from 1 to 6 destinations were randomly selected. The experimental results are shown in FIG. 2: almost the same indicators were achieved with a more than fifty-fold decrease in the number of additional requests. In the second case, cities were selected where flights from Moscow were most often carried out and which are relatively close (i.e., when choosing, the parameter was determined as the flight distance divided by the number of flights): Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar. Experiment results: a lower price was found in 7.8% of cases. That is, it is less effective than the previous one, but significantly more effective than the search without this choice.

Also, the technical result is achieved by modifying the claimed method when the user requests a round-trip transportation by fulfilling a round-trip transportation request from the source of information, as well as basic and additional requests separately for the “there” direction and the “back” direction, followed by all possible pairs from the received “one-way” transportation options and presenting them to the user along with the options from the “round-trip” request.

Despite the fact that this seems obvious, it was proven by a similar experiment. To simplify the flight “back”, only a basic request was made (it is obvious that when conducting a search using the proposed method of transportation “back”, the probability of finding a lower price will only increase, therefore this simplification is not important for the proof of obtaining a technical result). The experimental results are shown in FIG. 3. They are slightly worse than the results of the first experiment, since round-trip transportation is often cheaper than the sum of the round-trip transportation prices.

The technical result is also provided during the operation of an automated complex that implements the proposed method according to claim 1, the structural block diagram of which is schematically depicted in FIG. 5.

The complex is made up of interconnected blocks: a block for receiving requests from a BPS user; block of data storage and BHP construction; a block for sending and receiving data to / from a source or sources of BOPII information; block issuing information to the user BVIP. In this case, the user is connected to the BCH via one or more physical media, the BCH is connected to the BHP, the BHP is connected to the BVIP and interconnected with the BOPII, to which one or more sources of information are interconnected through one or more physical media, and the BVIP is connected to the user through one or multiple physical media. The order of interaction of these blocks is defined in each specific implementation of the complex.

The functioning scheme of the complex is shown in FIG. 5. Connections and interconnections can be made through various channels, such as cables, radio channels, optical data transmission channels, as well as through various physical media, such as a display, keyboard, drive, etc.

Let us consider in more detail the functioning of an automated complex that implements the proposed method.

From user 1 through one or more physical media, for example, devices for generating computer codes from user-perceived information, a drive, and / or a transmitting device for computer codes 3, receive a request from user 16 in the BEC 2, then transmit it in the form of an equivalent sequence computer codes 17 in BHP 6, then the basic request in the form of an equivalent sequence of computer codes 18 is sent to BOPII 8. Then, through one or more physical residents 10 transmit the basic request 19 to the source or sources of information 11, receive from the source or sources of information 20 transportation options corresponding to the basic request and, in the form of an equivalent sequence of computer codes 21, transmit them to BHP 6. In BHP 6, additional requests are generated in the form of a sequence of computer codes and send it 22 to BOPII 8, from BOPII 8 through one or more physical media 10 send additional requests 23 to the source or sources of information 11, receive from the source or and sources, transportation options 24 corresponding to additional requests, and in the form of equivalent sequences of computer codes 25 are transferred to BHP 6. In BHP 6, from those received options, those that pass through destination B are selected and transmitted along with the transportation options corresponding to the base request, in the form of a sequence of computer codes 26 in BVIP 13, from which these options 27 transmit these options 27 to user 1 through one or more physical media 15.

An example of proof of the operability of this complex is its implementation in the form of a hardware-software complex with the network address www.tickets-sale.ru, which was used for the above experiments.

Modification of the described complex is also practically useful and effective, in which the BOPII is made with the possibility of transmitting information to the source, BHP processing, and the BEP - receiving a transportation order from the user containing information about the selected option, passengers and payment details. BOPII is also connected to BVIP, and they are made, respectively, with the possibility of receiving from the source of information and transmitting to the user the results of order processing. The functioning of this modification in terms of the implementation of the operations of the claimed method is completely similar to that described above.

Modification of the described complex is also practically useful and effective, in which communication channels to the user's end device are included in the BPC and BVIP. The functioning of this modification in terms of the implementation of the operations of the claimed method is completely similar to the above complex. An example of such a modification is a server that implements the operations of the method and is connected to the network to which the user terminal is connected, in this case the network infrastructure — parts of the device indicated in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 as 3 and 15. The functioning of this modification in terms of the implementation of the operations of the claimed method is completely similar to that described above.

The above is enough to understand the essence of achieving a technical result using the declared objects. The use of interconnected sets of essential features of all declared objects to prove the achievement of a technical result is confirmed by experiments.

The foregoing clearly shows that the achievement of the specified technical result can only be ensured by an inextricably interconnected set of all the essential features of the claimed objects reflected in the claims. The differences indicated in it give reason to conclude that the technical solution is new, and the totality of the claimed claims in connection with their non-obviousness is about its inventive step, which is also proved by their detailed description given above. Compliance with the criterion of "industrial applicability" of the proposed method is proved both by its implementation and by the absence in the claimed claims of any features that are practically not practicable on an industrial scale. The declared values were obtained on the basis of statistical processing of the results of experimental studies, analysis and generalization of them, as well as using inventive intuition, based on the conditions for achieving the specified technical result.

Claims (6)

1. An automated method of searching for transportation, according to which a user receives a search request from point A to point B, then basic and additional requests are made from a device that implements the method to a source of information, while point A indicates a point of departure in additional requests , and the points of arrival are the points of arrival of routes from point B, then transit traffic through point B is selected from the received options and presented to the user along with the options from the basic request. 2. The method according to claim 1, in which the points of arrival in additional requests are selected depending on additional information about the points of arrival. 3. The method according to claim 1, in which, upon a user’s request for a round-trip transportation, a round-trip transportation request is made at the source of information, then the basic and additional requests are performed separately for the “there” direction and the “back” direction, then make up all possible pairs of the received one-way transportation options and present them to the user along with the options from the round-trip request. 4. The automated complex for performing the operations of the method according to claim 1, made up of interconnected blocks: a block for receiving requests from a BPZ user; block of data storage and BHP construction; a block for sending and receiving data to / from a source or sources of BOPII information; unit for issuing information to the BVIP user, while the user is connected to the BVP through one or more physical media, the BVP is connected to the BVP, the BKP is connected to the BVPI and interconnected with the BOPII, which is interconnected with one or more sources of information through one or more physical carriers, and the BVIP connected to the user through one or more physical media. 5. The automated complex according to claim 4, in which the BOPII is configured to transmit information to the source, BHP - processing, and BKP - receiving from the user a transportation order containing information about the selected option, passengers and payment details, as well as BOPII connected to BVIP and they are made accordingly with the possibility of receiving from the source of information and transmitting to the user the results of order processing. 6. The automated complex according to claim 4, in which the communication channels to the end device of the user are included in the BPZ and BVIP.

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