Dynamic Location Management for On-Demand Car Sharing System

Abstract

Recently, Car Sharing System is focused as a new public transportation system in Japan. However, traditional car sharing systems which we call Pre-Reserve Car Sharing System require advance reservations, and the number of stations where users get on/off for the systems is small. Thus, the number of users is limited availability and most of users only apply the system to round driving. On the other hand, the advances of global positioning systems and communication techniques improve the system in a new and different way. We call the new system On-Demand Car Sharing System. In the new system, users are available for the system on demand, i.e., users can get on/off any time and any stations. Thus, users apply the system to one-way driving in addition to round driving. In this paper, we focus on location balances of cars which is a key factor to improve utilization rate of the system. We propose a relocation algorithm for waiting cars based on virtual spring forces. In the last of this paper, we report our simulation results and show the effectiveness of our algorithm.