Assessing the Potential of the Strategic Formation of Urban Platoons for Shared Automated Vehicle Fleets

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of studying the impacts of the strategic formation of platoons in automated mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems in future cities. Forming platoons has the potential to improve traffic efficiency, resulting in reduced travel times and energy consumption. However, in the platoon formation phase, coordinating the vehicles at formation locations for forming a platoon may delay travelers. In order to assess these effects, an agent-based model has been developed to simulate an urban AMoD system in which vehicles travel between service points transporting passengers either forming or not forming platoons. A simulation study was performed on the road network of the city of The Hague, Netherlands, to assess the impact on traveling and energy usage by the strategic formation of platoons. Results show that forming platoons could save up to 9.6% of the system-wide energy consumption for the most efficient car model. However, this effect can vary significantly with the vehicle types and strategies used to form platoons. Findings suggest that, on average, forming platoons reduces the travel times for travelers even if they experience delays while waiting for a platoon to be formed. However, delays lead to longer travel times for the travelers with the platoon leaders, similar to what people experience while traveling in highly congested networks when platoon formation does not happen. Moreover, the platoon delay increases as the volume of AMoD requests decreases; in the case of an AMoD system serving only 20% of the commuter trips (by private cars in the case-study city), the average platoon delays experienced by these trips increase by 25%. We conclude that it is beneficial to form platoons to achieve energy and travel efficiency goals when the volume of AMoD requests is high.

An agent-based model for assessing the financial viability of autonomous mobility on-demand systems used as first and last-mile of public transport trips: A case-study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

“…Therefore the traffic impacts are not taken into account in the speed of the vehicles and thus the travel time of the travelers. For a reference on how to incorporate such traffic congestion effects in an ABM consult (Wang, Correia, & Hai, 2022).…”

Modeling the Competition between Multiple Automated Mobility On-Demand Operators: An Agent-Based Approach

“…Several works focused on the operational efficiency of AMoD systems and gave insights into the operational aspects of parking, relocation, charging, dispatching, and routing [5][6][7][8][9]. Wang et al [10] investigated the travel and energy impacts of forming platoons in an urban AMoD system. Some studies have provided an assessment of operating AMoD systems when combining public transportation options [11,12].…”

“…Regarding the road attributes (free-flow speed, speed at capacity, and traffic capacity), the deployment of AVs has not yet occurred in a city; therefore, there is no empirical data to calibrate the traffic-related parameters for automated driving. We keep the attributes of different road types, such as urban roads, rural roads, and local roads, that come from the original transport model, naturally based on existing human-driven vehicles [10].…”

“…The small vehicles can take up less road and parking space. Moreover, small-sized vehicles can save more energy with reduced weight [10]. Hence, we assume that purposely designed small SAVs are suitable for urban mobility applications, and could be available and affordable for future large-scale deployment.…”

Resilience-Oriented Scheduling of Shared Autonomous Electric Vehicles: A Cooperation Framework for Electrical Distribution Networks and Transportation Sector

“…Another potential application of automation in the transportation sector is Platoon operations that can afect energy consumption, elevate roadway capacity, and enhance trafc safety. Tis new emerging concept can potentially improve the efciency of future transportation [14,15].…”