Economies and diseconomies of scale in on-demand ridepooling systems

We analyse the sources of economies and diseconomies of scale in On-Demand Ridepooling (ODRP), disentangling three effects: when demand grows, average costs are reduced due to i) a larger fleet that diminishes waiting and walking times (Mohring Effect), and ii) matching users with more similar routes (Better-matching Effect). A counter...

Group-Based Distributed Auction Algorithms for Multi-Robot Task Assignment

This paper studies the multi-robot task assignment problem in which a fleet of dispersed robots needs to efficiently transport a set of dynamically appearing packages from their initial locations to corresponding destinations within prescribed time-windows. Each robot can carry multiple packages simultaneously within its capacity. Given a...

How to split the costs and charge the travellers sharing a ride? aligning system's optimum with users’ equilibrium

Emerging on-demand sharing alternatives, in which one resource is utilised simultaneously by a circumstantial group of users, entail several challenges regarding how to coordinate such users. A very relevant case refers to how to form groups in a mobility system that offers shared rides, and how to split the costs within the travellers of a...

Routing of Heterogeneous Fleets for Flash Deliveries via Vehicle Group Assignment

This paper presents a novel approach to route heterogeneous fleets for flash delivery operations. Flash deliveries offer to serve customers' wishes in minutes. We investigate a scenario that allows to pick up orders at multiple depots with a heterogeneous vehicle fleet leveraging different modes of transportation. We propose the Heterogeneous...

Anticipatory routing methods for an on-demand ridepooling mobility system

On-demand mobility systems in which passengers use the same vehicle simultaneously are a promising transport mode, yet difficult to control. One of the most relevant challenges 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...

On-demand ridesharing with optimized pick-up and drop-off walking locations

On-demand systems in which passengers with similar routes can share a vehicle are expected to become a relevant part of future mobility, thanks to their flexibility and their potential impact on reducing congestion. Nevertheless, due to the long detours required by a door-to-door scheme, they induce extra costs to the users in terms of delay....

On-Demand Grocery Delivery from Multiple Local Stores with Autonomous Robots

The advances in the area of autonomous delivery robots combined with customers' desire for fast delivery, bare potential for same-day delivery operations, specifically with small time windows between ordering and delivery. Most same-day deliveries are operated using a single depot and with vehicles' routes planned and fixed when leaving the...

Towards a geographically even level of service in on-demand ridepooling

On-demand ridepooling systems usually need to decide which requests to serve, when the number of vehicles is not enough to transport them all with waiting times that are acceptable by the users. When doing so, they tend to provide uneven service rates, concentrating rejections in some zones within the operation area. In this paper, we propose...

Unreliability in ridesharing systems: Measuring changes in users’ times due to new requests

On-demand systems in which several users can ride simultaneously the same vehicle have great potential to improve mobility while reducing congestion. Nevertheless, they have a significant drawback: the actual realization of a trip depends on the other users with whom it is shared, as they might impose extra detours that increase the waiting...

If you are late, everyone is late: late passenger arrival and ride-pooling systems' performance

Sharing rides in on-demand systems allow passengers to reduce their fares and service providers to increase revenue, though at the cost of adding uncertainty to the system. Notably, the uncertainty of ride-pooling systems stems not only from travel times but also from unique features of sharing, such as the dependency on other passengers'...