This paper considers the problem of supply-demand imbalances in Mobility-on-Demand (MoD) services, such as Uber or DiDi Rider. Such imbalances are due to uneven stochastic travel demand and can be prevented by proactively rebalance empty vehicles. To this end we propose a method that include estimated stochastic travel demand patterns into stochastic model predictive control (SMPC) for rebalancing of empty vehicles MoD ride-hailing service. More precisely, we first estimate passenger travel demand using Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), which provides demand uncertainty bounds for time pattern prediction. We then formulate a SMPC for the autonomous ride-hailing service and integrate demand predictions with uncertainty bounds into a receding horizon MoD optimization. In order to guarantee constraint satisfaction in the above optimization under estimated stochastic demand prediction, we employ a probabilistic constraining method with user defined confidence interval. Receding horizon MoD optimization with probabilistic constraints thereby calls for Chance Constrained Model Predictive Control (CCMPC). The benefits of the proposed method are twofold. First, travel demand uncertainty prediction from data can naturally be embedded into the MoD optimization framework. We show that for a given minimal fleet size the imbalance in each station can be kept below a certain threshold with a user defined probability. Second, CCMPC can further be relaxed into a Mixed-Integer-LP (MILP) and we show that the MILP can be solved as a corresponding Linear-Program which always admits a integral solution. Finally, we demonstrate through high-fidelity transportation simulations, that by tuning the confidence bound on the chance constraint close to optimal oracle performance can be achieved. The corresponding median customer wait time is reduced by 4% compared to using only the mean prediction of the GPR.
This paper studies optimal pricing and rebalancing policies for Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems. We take a macroscopic planning perspective to tackle a profit maximization problem while ensuring that the system is load-balanced. We begin by describing the system using a dynamic fluid model to show the existence and stability of an equilibrium (i.e., load balance) through pricing policies. We then develop an optimization framework that allows us to find optimal policies in terms of pricing and rebalancing. We first maximize profit by only using pricing policies, then incorporate re…
This paper treats an optimal scheduling problem of control nodes in networked systems. We newly introduce both the L0 and l0 constraints on control inputs to extract a time-varying small number of effective control nodes. As the cost function, we adopt the trace of the controllability Gramian to reduce the required control energy. Since the formulated optimization problem is combinatorial, we introduce a convex relaxation problem for its computational tractability. After a reformulation of the problem into an optimal control problem to which Pontryagin's maximum principle is applicable, we giv…
This paper studies congestion-aware route-planning policies for Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems, whereby a fleet of autonomous vehicles provides on-demand mobility under mixed traffic conditions. Specifically, we first devise a network flow model to optimize the AMoD routing and rebalancing strategies in a congestion-aware fashion by accounting for the endogenous impact of AMoD flows on travel time. Second, we capture reactive exogenous traffic consisting of private vehicles selfishly adapting to the AMoD flows in a user-centric fashion by leveraging an iterative approach. Finally…
Fleet Rebalancing for Expanding Shared e-Mobility Systems: A Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach
University of Exeter（埃克塞特大学）；The Alan Turing Institute（阿兰·图灵研究所）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；Tongji University（同济大学）；University of Leeds（利兹大学）；University of California San Diego（加利福尼亚大学圣迭戈分校）；University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学）
In this paper, we study the potential benefits from smart charging for a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) providing autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) services. We first consider a profit-maximizing platform operator who makes decisions for routing, charging, rebalancing, and pricing for rides based on a network flow model. Clearly, each of these decisions directly influence the fleet's smart charging potential; however, it is not possible to directly characterize the effects of various system parameters on smart charging under a classical network flow model. As such, we propose a modeling v…
Shared mobility on demand (MoD) services are receiving increased attention as many high volume ride-hailing companies are offering shared services (e.g. UberPool, LyftLine) at an increasing rate. Also, the advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) promises further operational opportunities to benefit from these developments as AVs enable a centrally operated and fully connected fleet. There are two fundamental tasks for a shared MoD service: ride-matching and vehicle rebalancing. Traditionally, these two functions are performed sequentially and independently. In this paper, we propose and formulate …
University of California San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；San Diego State University（圣地亚哥州立大学）；University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill（北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校）
Safety is a critical concern for the success of urban air mobility, especially in dynamic and uncertain environments. This paper proposes a path planning algorithm based on RRT in conjunction with chance constraints in the presence of uncertain obstacles. The chance-constrained formulation for Gaussian distributed obstacles is developed by converting the probabilistic constraints to deterministic constraints in terms of distribution parameters. The probabilistic feasible region at every time step can be established through the simulation of the system state and the evaluation of convex constra…
Bike-sharing is becoming increasingly popular as an urban traffic mode while increasing the affordability, flexibility, and reliability of interconnected public transportation systems (i.e., interconnected light rail, buses, micro-mobility, and ride-sharing modes of transportation). From the consumers perspective, 1) finding a bike station in convenient locations where demand usually occurs and 2) the availability of bikes at rush hours with a lesser probability of encountering empty docks (for fixed-station bike-share systems) are two key concerns. Some stations are more likely to be empty or…
A high number of electric vehicles (EVs) in the transportation sector necessitates an advanced scheduling framework for e-mobility ecosystem operation as a whole in order to overcome range anxiety and create a viable business model for charging stations (CSs). The framework must account for the stochastic nature of all stakeholders' operations, including EV drivers, CSs, and retailers and their mutual interactions. In this paper, a three-layer joint distributionally robust chance-constrained (DRCC) model is proposed to plan grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation in day-ahead…
Mobility on demand (MoD) systems show great promise in realizing flexible and efficient urban transportation. However, significant technical challenges arise from operational decision making associated with MoD vehicle dispatch and fleet rebalancing. For this reason, operators tend to employ simplified algorithms that have been demonstrated to work well in a particular setting. To help bridge the gap between novel and existing methods, we propose a modular framework for fleet rebalancing based on model-free reinforcement learning (RL) that can leverage an existing dispatch method to minimize s…
Mobility-On-Demand (MoD) services have been transforming the urban mobility ecosystem. However, they raise a lot of concerns for their impact on congestion, Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), and competition with transit. There are also questions about their long-term survival because of inherent inefficiencies in their operations. Considering the popularity of the MoD services, increasing ride-pooling is an important means to address these concerns. Shareability depends not only on riders attitudes and preferences but also on operating models deployed by providers. The paper introduces an advance…
Technical University of Denmark（丹麦技术大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）
Autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems represent a rapidly developing mode of transportation wherein travel requests are dynamically handled by a coordinated fleet of robotic, self-driving vehicles. Given a graph representation of the transportation network - one where, for example, nodes represent areas of the city, and edges the connectivity between them - we argue that the AMoD control problem is naturally cast as a node-wise decision-making problem. In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning framework to control the rebalancing of AMoD systems through graph neural networ…
One of the most relevant challenges regarding on-demand ridepooling relates to the spatial imbalances of the demand, which induce a mismatch between the position of the vehicles and the origins of the emerging requests. Most ridepooling models face this problem through rebalancing methods only, i.e., moving idle vehicles towards areas with high rejections rate, which is done independently from routing and vehicle-to-orders assignments, so that vehicles serving passengers (a large portion of the total fleet) remain unaffected. This paper introduces two types of techniques for anticipatory routi…
UC Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Ford AV LLC（福特自动驾驶有限责任公司）；Ford Research and Advanced Engineering（福特研究与高级工程部）
We propose a Stochastic MPC (SMPC) formulation for autonomous driving at traffic intersections which incorporates multi-modal predictions of surrounding vehicles for collision avoidance constraints. The multi-modal predictions are obtained with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) and constraints are formulated as chance-constraints. Our main theoretical contribution is a SMPC formulation that optimizes over a novel feedback policy class designed to exploit additional structure in the GMM predictions, and that is amenable to convex programming. The use of feedback policies for prediction is motivated…
A Hierarchical Stochastic Model Predictive Control Framework for Integrated Request-aware Charge Scheduling and Service Allocation
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学、法国国家科学研究中心、格勒诺布尔理工学院）；College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学计算与数据科学学院）
