Items-mapping and route optimization in a grocery store using Dijkstra's, Bellman-Ford and Floyd-Warshall Algorithms

Abstract

The study applies three shortest-path-finding algorithms namely Dijkstra's, Bellman-Ford and Floyd- Warshall Algorithms into a grocery store to provide users the shortest path to be traversed by the user while getting the items on their grocery list. The application created is a server-client-based system with the client being an application installed in an android tablet while the server application is a C# program based on Microsoft Visual Studio Environment. The path lengths provided by the three algorithms are equal for most instances but they differ on computational time based on different number of items in the list. Actual tests were conducted in a grocery store and the time spent to buy, distance travelled by the user and steps taken have all been reduced after using the application.