Empty Vehicle Redistribution with Time Windows in Autonomous Taxi Systems

Abstract

In this article, we investigate empty vehicle redistribution algorithms with time windows for personal rapid transit or autonomous station-based taxi services, from a passenger service perspective. We present an Index Based Redistribution Time Limited algorithm that improves upon existing algorithms by incorporating expected passenger arrivals and predicted waiting times limitations. We evaluate 17 variations of algorithms on a test case in Stockholm, Sweden. The results show that the combination of Send The Nearest and Index Based Redistribution Time Limited algorithms provides promising results for both Poisson arrivals and real demand, outperforming the other tested methods, in terms of passenger waiting time and number of passengers not served within their time windows.