Sebastian Hörl

Agent-based simulation of autonomous taxi services with dynamic demand responses

Abstract: An agent-based simulation approach is presented, which makes it possible to capture the dynamic interplay between a supply of autonomous vehicle fleets with distinct operational schemes and a population of artificial persons based on an established multiagent traffic simulation framework. The simulation is able to show how agents react to the new travel options and make consistent decisions based on a well-defined framework of utility scoring.

Towards a Testbed for Dynamic Vehicle Routing Algorithms

Since modern transport services are becoming more flexible, demand-responsive, and energy/cost efficient, there is a growing demand for large-scale microscopic simulation platforms in order to test sophisticated routing algorithms. Such platforms have to simulate in detail, not only the dynamically changing demand and supply of the relevant service, but also traffic flow and other relevant transport services. This paper presents the DVRP extension to the open-source MATSim simulator. The extension is designed to be highly general and customizable to simulate a wide range of dynamic rich vehicle routing problems. The extension allows plugging in of various algorithms that are responsible for continuous re-optimisation of routes in response to changes in the system. The DVRP extension has been used in many research and commercial projects dealing with simulation of electric and autonomous taxis, demand-responsive transport, personal rapid transport, free-floating car sharing and parking search.

A first look at bridging discrete choice modeling and agent-based microsimulation in MATSim

Abstract The agent-based transport simulation framework MATSim allows for the simulation of dynamic transport scenarios with agents, that adaptively make travel choices. Regarding mode choice, a heavily randomized process is used to date, which allows for very unrealistic mode decisions in the short run to arrive at consistent mode shares after a large number of iterations. The authors show that implementing a discrete mode choice model may drastically increase the convergence speed of the simulation, but point out that considerable future research is necessary to make travel decisions consistent and to back the process with a strong theoretical foundation.

An integrated simulation environment for autonomous mobility on demand in Zurich

for the Swiss Transport Research Conference 2018 An integrated simulation environment for Autonomous Mobility on Demand in Zurich Sebastian Hörl Over the course of the past two years research activities around fleets of automated vehicles have been conducted in the Swiss context. First, a thorough assessment of costs and prices of automated vehicles (Bösch et al., 2018) has been undertaken, including numerous factors from fuel to maintenance, dispatching and cleaning of the vehicles. Second, a stated choice survey has been conducted (Becker and Axhausen, 2017) which explores how people in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland would change their travel behaviour once a fleet of automated vehicles becomes available. Third, a simulation platform based on the agentand activity-based simulation framework MATSim (Horni et al., 2016) has been developed that allows for the simulation of automated vehicle services with highly customizable fleet characteristics (Hörl, 2017). The paper will present the combination of those three components into an integrated simulation environment that allows for detailed demand estimation and assessment of future scenarios for Autonomous Mobility on Demand systems. Bösch, P. .M., F. Becker, H. Becker and K. W. Axhausen (2017) Cost-based analysis of autonomous mobility services, Transport Policy​, ​64​, 76-91. Becker, F. and K. W. Axhausen (2017) Predicting the use of automated vehicles. [First results from the pilot survey], presented at the 17th Swiss Transport Research Conference, May 2017, Ascona. Horni, A., K. Nagel and K. W. Axhausen (2016) ​The Multi-Agent Transport Simulation MATSim​, Ubiquity Press, London. Hörl, S. (2017) Agent-based simulation of autonomous taxi services with dynamic demand responses, ​Procedia Computer Science​, ​109​, 899-904.

A MATSim scenario for autonomous vehicles in La Défense and Île-de-France

The synthesis of a scenario for the agent-based traffic simulation framework MATSim for the Île-de-France region is documented. A reduction of the scenario to an area around La Défense in Paris is proposed and next steps towards a study of autonomous vehicle fleets in that area are shown.