Practical Uses of Dijkstra?

[gammaman]

Could those of you with "real world experience" share some of the "real world" uses of Dijkstra.

[Zachm]

Any GIS (Geographic Information System), which needs to determine the shortest path from point A to point B on a road map (a weighted graph actually), can make a good use of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm (I believe you refer to this algorithm, right ?), perhaps with some tweaking and modifications.
See this (http://publish.uwo.ca/~jmalczew/gida_1/Zhan/Zhan.htm) link for example.

The real problem is to determine the correct edge weights at run-time, since the distance is not the only parameter - there are also weather, traffic loads, etc.

Regards,
Zachm

[Russco]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Shortest_Path_First
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm

[Peter_APIIT]

Dijistra used to determine shortest path within a graph network.

[spartygw]

I used an A* algorithm for route planning a team of UAVs involving obstacles such as no-fly zones for the Army.

After initial planning the various routes were then processed looking for air space conflicts to prevent UAVs from colliding. In the case where there was a potential conflict a secondary route planner would adjust the air speed of one of the vehicles along a flight leg or plan a circuit board-like route that would jump one over the other.

-gw