Work towards making automated driving systems a reality is well underway. In this study, we look at what is likely to be one of the first widespread implementations of a form of automated driving on public roads, i.e., truck platooning, where virtually connected trucks drive at short headways to save fuel and associated emissions. With progressing technology, we may see platoons with drivers resting while being in the truck, or even platoons in which not all trucks require drivers. Hence, platooning technology has a significant impact on the jobs of truck drivers especially when driver involvement reduces. Driver acceptance of this emerging technology is therefore an important factor in the implementation of platooning and, consequently, automated driving in general. In this study, we explore the range of perspectives that exist among drivers by conducting focus groups in The Netherlands. These discussions indicate that drivers foresee that platooning will eventually become a reality but believe it will have a negative impact on the quality of their work and their job satisfaction.@en

Inspired by recent innovations in the retail industry, we study an on-demand personal shopper service that lets customers shop online for products from brick and mortar stores. A fleet of personal shoppers fulfills customer orders, performing both shopping at the stores and delivery to the customers. The operation of such a service requires to dynamically offer service to incoming shopping and delivery requests, coordinate a fleet of shoppers, schedule shopping operations at stores, and execute deliveries to customers on time. This paper studies this new problem and proposes three different order-consolidation strategies for service operators. Our numerical results show that order consolidation, particularly shopping consolidation, can significantly increase the number of served orders by better using the available shopper capacity. We observe that splitting orders can further enhance the performance of the system. The results also suggest that personal shopper services increase time utilization and execute shopping activities using significantly less human resources than customers shopping for themselves.

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