"To evaluate the first algorithm for distinguishing routes we recorded reference profiles for several different routes. We used a dataset of 43 profiles for 4 different routes about 19 kilometers each. Driving in different directions along the same roads (from point A to B vs. from point B to A) is considered two different routes. We perform a leave-one-out cross validation, each time using one of the profiles for testing. Figure 5 is a confusion matrix, which shows a high success rate in classifying the routes. The achieved successful classification rate in this case was 93%."
So, given a bunch of known routes (like a stretch of highway), this algorithm is able to match your phone's battery-usage signature to one of those routes, sort of like how a service like SoundHound is able to identify a piece of music based off of a few seconds' recording.