A Multi-Agent Advanced Traveler Information System for Optimal Trip Planning in a Co-Modal Framework

Abstract

We present an advanced traveler information system (ATIS) for public and private transportation, including vehicle sharing and pooling services. The ATIS uses an agent-based architecture and multi-objective optimization to answer trip planning requests from multiple users in a co-modal setting, considering vehicle preferences and conflicting criteria. At each set of users’ requests, the transportation network is represented by a co-modal graph that allows decomposing the trip planning problem into smaller tasks: the shortest routes between the network nodes are determined and then combined to obtain possible itineraries. Using multi-objective optimization, the set of user-vehicle-route combinations according to the users’ preferences is determined, ranking all possible route agents’ coalitions. The ATIS is tested for the real case study of the Lille metropolitan area (Nord Pas de Calais, France).