Urban sensing as a random search process

We study a new random search process: the taxi drive. The motivation for this process comes from urban sensing in which sensors are mounted on moving vehicles such as taxis, allowing environments to be opportunistically monitored. Inspired by movements of real drive is composed both and regular parts: passengers brought randomly chosen locations via deterministic (i.e. shortest paths) routes. show through numerical that hybrid motion endows with advantageous spreading properties. In particular, certain graph topologies it offers reduced cover times compared walks persistent walks.