Geolocation – How Cab Booking Services Select the Nearest Driver Coordinates

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I understand Uber (or any other cab service) server receives the user coordinates through apps. Say I book the cab at 10am. How does Uber know which cab is vacant and nearest to the user coordinate, then notifies that driver?

Say I am at location X of city New York. How does the Uber server know what are the cabs near to location X? Do all cabs send their coordinates to the server at a regular interval of time which the server maintains somewhere in memory and then when a user request comes, it selects the cab which is nearest or is it an altogether different algorithm?

I believe Uber uses spherical geometry services. But I am not sure how it helps in above?

Best Answer

Each cab has a device which sends its location and driver availablity to a central server.

This allows the central server to work out the closest driver, but also make a decision based on driver rating and other commercial factors.

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