QARTA: An ML-based System for Accurate Map Services

Maps services are ubiquitous in widely used applications including navigation systems, ride sharing, and items/food delivery. Though there are plenty of efforts to support such services through designing more efficient algorithms, we believe that efficiency is no longer a bottleneck to these services. Instead, it is the accuracy of the underlying road network and query result. This paper presents QARTA; an open-source full-fledged system for highly accurate and scalable map services. QARTA employs machine learning techniques to construct its own highly accurate map, not only in terms of map topology but more importantly, in terms of edge weights. QARTA also employs machine learning techniques to calibrate its query answers based on contextual information, including transportation modality, location, and time of day/week. QARTA is currently deployed in all Taxis and the third largest food delivery company in the State of Qatar, replacing the commercial map service that was in use, and responding in real-time to hundreds of thousands of daily API calls. Experimental evaluation of QARTA shows its comparable or higher accuracy than commercial services.