171 research outputs found
Control of Robotic Mobility-On-Demand Systems: a Queueing-Theoretical Perspective
In this paper we present and analyze a queueing-theoretical model for
autonomous mobility-on-demand (MOD) systems where robotic, self-driving
vehicles transport customers within an urban environment and rebalance
themselves to ensure acceptable quality of service throughout the entire
network. We cast an autonomous MOD system within a closed Jackson network model
with passenger loss. It is shown that an optimal rebalancing algorithm
minimizing the number of (autonomously) rebalancing vehicles and keeping
vehicles availabilities balanced throughout the network can be found by solving
a linear program. The theoretical insights are used to design a robust,
real-time rebalancing algorithm, which is applied to a case study of New York
City. The case study shows that the current taxi demand in Manhattan can be met
with about 8,000 robotic vehicles (roughly 60% of the size of the current taxi
fleet). Finally, we extend our queueing-theoretical setup to include congestion
effects, and we study the impact of autonomously rebalancing vehicles on
overall congestion. Collectively, this paper provides a rigorous approach to
the problem of system-wide coordination of autonomously driving vehicles, and
provides one of the first characterizations of the sustainability benefits of
robotic transportation networks.Comment: 10 pages, To appear at RSS 201
A Public Bicycle Sharing System Considering Renting and Middle Stations
Recently, public bicycle sharing system (PBSS) has become one of the most favorite urban transportation systems that can help governments to decrease environmental problems such as pollution and traffic. This paper studies a sharing system that includes two types of stations. The first category contains stations that users can rent or return back bicycles and each bicycle can be rented by any new user who arrives to the stations. The second group is the stations which are near shopping centers, historical and other places that users and tourists can stop and visit them. These stations are used only for parking the rented bicycles for a period of time and after that, the users must ride their bicycles and turn them back to their destination stations. After discussing the network of the model under the closed Jackson network, the Mean Value Analysis (MVA) method will be used to calculate the mean queue of each station and analyzing the proposed model
Fluid and Diffusion Limits for Bike Sharing Systems
Bike sharing systems have rapidly developed around the world, and they are
served as a promising strategy to improve urban traffic congestion and to
decrease polluting gas emissions. So far performance analysis of bike sharing
systems always exists many difficulties and challenges under some more general
factors. In this paper, a more general large-scale bike sharing system is
discussed by means of heavy traffic approximation of multiclass closed queueing
networks with non-exponential factors. Based on this, the fluid scaled
equations and the diffusion scaled equations are established by means of the
numbers of bikes both at the stations and on the roads, respectively.
Furthermore, the scaling processes for the numbers of bikes both at the
stations and on the roads are proved to converge in distribution to a
semimartingale reflecting Brownian motion (SRBM) in a -dimensional box,
and also the fluid and diffusion limit theorems are obtained. Furthermore,
performance analysis of the bike sharing system is provided. Thus the results
and methodology of this paper provide new highlight in the study of more
general large-scale bike sharing systems.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure
Sustainability vs. Price: Analysis of Electric Multi-Modal Vehicle Sharing Systems under Substitution Effects
To pave the path for sustainable mobility, Information Systems are a promising tool to encourage users to adopt more sustainable mobility behavior. In this study, we investigate how potential demand management interventions affect the economic and environmental metrics of a multi-modal vehicle sharing operator. To this end, we narrow our focus on two important user characteristics, namely the users\u27 flexibility and willingness to pay an additional premium for more environmentally sustainable vehicles. Our study employs a combined discrete-event and multi-agent simulation approach, which we calibrate with real-world rental data of leading free-floating vehicle sharing platforms. The results show that it is economically and ecologically disadvantageous for both the society and the fleet operator to simply increase users\u27 mode choice flexibility. However, we clearly observe that this picture flips once users are willing to pay a surcharge to rent more environmentally sustainable vehicles
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