So what is Texxi?

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Texxi is a system based on the idea of a futures exchange which seeks to link supply and demand for transit between buyers (passengers) and sellers (vehicle operators). It works by allowing prospective passengers to communicate their intentions through a mobile device and allows them to use their social network profiles to better find matches to travel with. Ideas from applied math and wing design complete the matching in a patent pending process.

It exists to solve the largescale dynamic ridesharing problem and is agnostic as to how requests for transport service are collated. App, email, SMS are all covered by the 2005-2006 patent filings.

US 11/485,164 (filed 2006)
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Misconceptions::FAQs
A New Beginning
What is Texxi?
Market Size of Texxi
Why Now
Underpinnings

How it all came about

You must know the old joke:
"A mathematician walks into the break room to make a cup of tea. He takes the kettle off the table, boils water, grabs a teabag and leaves, forgetting the kettle on the stove. A second mathematician wants tea too, he goes to the break room, moves the kettle back to the table and declares the problem trivial."

The largescale ridesharing problem is actually something that was solved in a combination of electricity research, aeronautics wing design ( http://www.theprojectspot.com/tag/genetic-algorithms ) and commodity exchanges. We do this in Aeronautics for Wing Design using Genetic Algorithms. After having put a wing through a solver. You only will need a basic understanding of Laplace, Fourier and Bessel Transforms.

Texxi is a contraction for Transit Exchange for XXI Century. It is a largescale ridesharing system that combines ideas from futures exchanges, integrated battlespaces, aeronautical wing design solvers and social networks to make the holy grail of dynamic, largescale ridesharing a reality for the first time.

The use of apps to hail cabs for a single person was shown as far back as 1999-2001. What was thought of as impossible was getting people to share on a huge scale in a profitable manner.

That is where Texxi came into its own. The US & Global Patent USPTO20080015923 is about mobile devices with apps sending messages to a backend aggregator.

You only have to think like a hybrid mathematician / engineer to see the solution to dynamic, real-time, ridesharing on a largescale. 

US & Global Patent USPTO20080015923 filed in July 2006

My insight was as follows:

If it was possible to map the problem of ridesharing into a form that has been solved already by something else - then one has proved it can be solved.

The difficult problem of "Waiting Times" for taxis is a real-time, dynamic version of the economic problem of the "coincidence of wants". This has already been solved very well by Commodity (and/or Futures) Exchanges which allow buyers and sellers to trade instantaneously even if there is a delay in the time and a mismatch in capacity.

When someone wants to buy shares from a seller, it is highly unlikely there is a seller who wants to sell that precise number of shares to a particular buyer AT THAT precise instant. Thus an order matching system has to deal with this mismatch in time and space (volume) (capacity). We call that activity "Market Making".

The key idea is assuredness of completion of trades. So if a market maker can make sure it can provide ridespace (seat capacity) when people want transport (real-time) from A to B, we can make sure those people can use a largescale taxi sharing system. The taxi does not have even to be a car. It can be any size of bus, a ferry or even trains.

This is also allied to roadspacetime usage and congestion. It is now possible to make it fair for all users of the road, not just the richest. People who use the road less can receive payments for staying off it at busy times.

Hence why my time working for Electrical Engineer PostDoc Researchers at National Grid was so important. As was my time in the Royal Air Force, understanding integrated battlespaces.

To recap: On a similar note: a mathematician and an engineer are bunking together in a cabin in winter, and they leave a fire going in the fireplace. Soon they wake up to see that the rug has caught on fire; the engineer grabs a pot from the cupboard, fills it with snow and dumps it on the floor, putting the fire out.

Later they wake to find sparks have again leapt to the rug, setting it on fire. The mathematician walks over, grabs the pot off the floor and returns it to the cupboard, thus reducing the problem to the one previously solved.

Some Press from 2005 - 2010

  1. Toronto Star Article, Feb 2009 
    http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/03/03/frugal_cab_patrons_hail_texxi.html
  2. PlentyMag: Ticket To Ride 
    www.plentymag.com/features/2007/06/ticket_to_ride.php
  3. Holyrood Magazine, Feb 2009:: Advances in Communication are leading to new ideas in Transport 
    http://texxi.com/pres/web/viewer.html?file=holyrood.pdf
  4. Leapfrogging in Reverse | WorldChanging.org 
    http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003216.html
  5. GreenCarCongress JUL 2005:: Texting (SMS) for a Shared Taxi: Demand Responsive Transit Brokerage 
    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/07/texting_sms_for.html
  6. Isle of Wight County Press, 2008 
    http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/get-home-safely-with-taxi-text-21350.aspx