Real-Time Control of Mixed Fleets in Mobility-on-Demand Systems.

Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to be beneficial for Mobility-on-Demand (MoD), thanks to their ability of being globally coordinated. To facilitate the steady transition towards full autonomy, we consider the transition period of AV deployment, whereby an MoD system operates a mixed fleet of AVs and human-driven vehicles (HVs). In such systems, AVs are centrally coordinated by the operator, and the HVs might strategically respond to the coordination of AVs. We devise computationally tractable strategies to coordinate mixed fleets in MoD systems. Specifically, we model an MoD system with a mixed fleet using a Stackelberg framework where the MoD operator serves as the leader and HVs serve as the followers. We further develop a real-time coordination algorithm for AVs. The proposed approach is validated using a case study inspired by real operational data of an MoD service in Singapore. Results show that the proposed approach can significantly improve system performance.