An Auction-Based Multi-Agent System for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Autonomous Vehicles and Alternative Locations
J. Los (TU Delft - Transport Engineering and Logistics)
F. Schulte (TU Delft - Transport Engineering and Logistics)
M.T.J. Spaan (TU Delft - Algorithmics)
R. R. Negenborn (TU Delft - Transport Engineering and Logistics)
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Abstract
The trends of autonomous transportation and mobility on demand in line with large numbers of requests increasingly call for decentralized vehicle routing optimization. Multi-agent systems (MASs) allow to model fully autonomous decentralized decision making, but are rarely considered in current decision support approaches. We propose a multi-agent approach in which autonomous vehicles are modeled as independent decision makers that locally interact with auctioneers for transportation orders. The developed MAS finds solutions for a realistic routing problem in which multiple pickup and delivery alternatives are possible per order. Although information sharing is significantly restricted, the MAS results in better solutions than a centralized Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search with full information sharing on large problem instances where computation time is limited.