192 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
Stochastic Model Predictive Control for Autonomous Mobility on Demand
This paper presents a stochastic, model predictive control (MPC) algorithm
that leverages short-term probabilistic forecasts for dispatching and
rebalancing Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand systems (AMoD, i.e. fleets of
self-driving vehicles). We first present the core stochastic optimization
problem in terms of a time-expanded network flow model. Then, to ameliorate its
tractability, we present two key relaxations. First, we replace the original
stochastic problem with a Sample Average Approximation (SAA), and characterize
the performance guarantees. Second, we separate the controller into two
separate parts to address the task of assigning vehicles to the outstanding
customers separate from that of rebalancing. This enables the problem to be
solved as two totally unimodular linear programs, and thus easily scalable to
large problem sizes. Finally, we test the proposed algorithm in two scenarios
based on real data and show that it outperforms prior state-of-the-art
algorithms. In particular, in a simulation using customer data from DiDi
Chuxing, the algorithm presented here exhibits a 62.3 percent reduction in
customer waiting time compared to state of the art non-stochastic algorithms.Comment: Submitting to the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent
Transportation Systems 201
Deployment of Autonomous Electric Taxis with Consideration for Charging Stations
Autonomous electric vehicles are set to replace most conventional vehicles in the near future. Extensive research is being done to improve efficiency at the individual and fleet level. There is much potential benefit in optimizing the deployment and rebalancing of Autonomous Electric Taxi Fleets (AETF) in cities with dynamic demand and limited charging infrastructure. We propose a Fleet Management System with an Online Optimization Model to assign idle taxis to either a region or a charging station considering the current demand and charging station availability. Our system uses real-time information such as demand in regions, taxi locations and state of charge (SoC), and charging station availability to make optimal decisions in satisfying the dynamic demand considering the range-based constraints of electric taxis. We integrate our Fleet Management System with MATSim, an agent-based transport simulator, to simulate taxis serving real on-demand requests extracted from the San Francisco taxi mobility dataset. We found our system to be effective in rebalancing and ensuring efficient taxi operation by assigning them to charging stations when depleted. We evaluate this system using different performance metrics such as passenger waiting time, fleet efficiency (taxi empty driving time) and charging station utilization by varying initial SoC of taxis, frequency of optimization and charging station capacity and power
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