Autonomous and modular robo-vehicles are expected to serve as low-cost and fully compliant substitutes for conventional chauffeured counterparts in the mobility market. This project aims at leveraging these enabling technologies to design and operate demand-responsive mobility services that provide door-to-door transportation. At the operational level, we analyze the potential of dynamic sharing, relocation, and swap of modular units across multiple categories of customers via systems of closed-form nonlinear equations and differential equations. At the strategic or tactical level, we quantify the minimum resource requirements (e.g., the required operating fleet size) needed to achieve any passenger level of service (e.g., expected door-to-door travel time) by deriving new analytical solutions to a random bipartite matching problem. A series of agent-based simulation experiments are conducted to verify the accuracy of the proposed analytical formulas and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed service strategies. The results of this project are expected to help mobility service providers and government agencies systematically plan the rolling stock resources while exploring operating, pricing, and regulatory options.
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About the speaker: Yanfeng Ouyang is George Krambles Professor, Paul Kent Faculty Scholar, and Donald Willett Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His is also Associate Director for Mobility of the Illinois Center for Transportation. His work mainly focuses on planning, operations, and control of complex transportation and logistics systems. He currently serves (or previously served) as a Department/Area/Associate/Board Editor of IISE Transactions, Networks and Spatial Economics, Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part B, Transportation Research Part C, and Transportmetrica B. He is also Chair of TRB’s AEP40 Committee on Transportation Network Modeling. His work has been recognized by a Merit Award for Technical Study from the American Planning Association, a Walter L. Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers, a High Impact Project Award from the Illinois Department of Transportation, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, among others.