All engineering is just “applied math.” It’s the “applied part” that makes it patentable. (You cannot patent an algorithm. You can patent a method of getting getting radios to aggregate into networks. Or a method of wayfinding for a self driving car. Or a method of indexing and ranking web pages.)
The purpose of a patent is to grant a monopoly for an invention that would not be obvious to someone skilled in the art.
These business methods should not enjoy patent protection that prevents someone from independently discovering and implementing same solution. There is a finite number of ways to efficiently implement wayfinding for a self-driving car.
Funny you mention wayfinding algorithms: There had been decades of progress in that regard without a single patent, only the last decade (since big business got in the game), the rules have suddenly changed.
You can't convert hardware into software model, the software model is necessarily an imperfect idealization, created deductively even, which thus doesn't necessarily work IRL, because fundamentally it's imagination.
