Project 2 - Genetic Algorithm in College Station, Texas

Abstract:
The purpose of my project is to try to use the power of genetic algorithm in an everyday application. Transportation from place to place seems to be always measure on how far one place is to another. For my project, I wanted to pick something simple that a majority of college students like to take advantage of...coffee shops.

College Station, Texas has its share of Starbucks and coffee shops fueling the young minds of Texas A&M University and Blinn College. My experiment is to find out if I can connect all of these scattered coffee shops by an elevated (theoretical) transit rail that would have a freedom of direction through these coffee shop locations. By using Grasshopper 3d, Rhinoceros, and an assortment of plug-ins I will walk through the steps of my attempt of connection these energy producing hubs (coffee shops).


Theoretical Process:
Step 1: Site Location: College Station, Texas
Step 2: Coffee Shop Location

Step 3: Map Surrounding Residences

Step 4: Find Minimum Circle Area

Step 5-7 Calculate Easiest Path Through Coffee Shops

Modelling Process:

Step 1:

By using the Elk plug-in for Grasshopper I used satellite .osm data for the College Station area to generate a two-dimensional map out of curves. This plug-in can septette major road ways, minor roadways, highways, railroads, waterways and much more.

Elk Plug-in to Generate College Station Map Curves

Step 2:

Once the map was generated I could then document out the exact points of where the coffee shops are located around the city. Then, around each coffee shop I then roughly defined the residential areas and locations that may access the coffee shop in their proximity.

Six Coffee Shop Locations With Residential Points

Step 3:

These residential points will help give me input points to find minimum circle areas around each coffee shop. The minimum circle area can be generated by using the galapagos plug-in which goes through a series of programs and scripts to find the minimal or maximum options for your project. 

Minimum Circle Area (MCA) Using Galapagos

Galapagos In-Progress

Step 4:

After finding the MCA around each of the six coffee shops, I then extracted each centroid of the circles. These centroids will be added to an arbitrary point point that will make up part of the curve that will represent the transit rail. There will be six of the arbitrary points added to the centroids.

Addition of Arbitrary Points and Centroids of MCA

Step 5:

After each of the distances have been defined. Add all of the results into one single Mass Addition  that will need to run through a series of Python script generators to calculate the best fit points for the "transit curve." The smoothness of the curve can be defined by generating a NURBS curve in grasshopper. 

The more points used in the galapagos algorithm the smoother the path will generate. The use of genetic algorithm can be very powerful in city planning of new transportation routes or just simple pathways through campuses. 

Below is a step-by-step video of my Rhino Grasshopper model:

THANK YOU

***All diagram images were produced by Mitchell Dickinson

***Map references: Google Earth, Google Maps, Openstreetmap