Autonomous Taxi Research Articles

Using Service Blueprints to Explore Changes in User Experience and Corporate Investment Induced by AI

Although the blueprint service has been used to analyze services using AI, it has not been used to characterize how a service changed as AI was increasingly used to change it. We propose a comparative case study design of the taxi service in France and USA at three stages of AI introduction, traditional taxi (zero AI), Uber (AI to improve the matchmaking between users and drivers), autonomous taxi (AI to book the taxi, find it, optimize the journey, and drive the taxi). For each case, we use the service blueprint tool to show how AI changes the user experience and the internal (front facing and backstage) of the service, to help companies better understand both the value AI can bring to user, and the corresponding changes it requires in terms of assets and process. We show how an improved service blueprint with lines for data and algorithms can help businesses successfully introduce AI. The results also underline the need to carefully consider emotional and social values in addition to functional ones, and go beyond eliminating pain points to also focus on creating surprising experiences.

The matching problem of empty vehicle redistribution in autonomous taxi systems

This article discusses empty vehicle redistribution algorithms for PRT and autonomous taxi services from a passenger service perspective. In modern literature reactive methods such as nearest neighbours are commonly used. In this article we first formulate the general matching problem on a bipartite graph of available vehicles and stations. In addition, we propose an index-based proactive redistribution (IBR) 18,19 algorithm based on predicted near-future demand at stations. The results of different redistribution methods implemented on a simple line test case show that none of the proposed methods are optimal in all cases. Test results of six variations of combined proactive and reactive strategies on a test case in Paris Saclay, France with 20 stations and 100 vehicles are given. The combined Nearest Neighbour / IBR provides a promising solution for both peak and off-peak demand, significantly outperforming all other methods considered, in terms of passenger waiting time (both average and maximum) as well as in terms of station queue lengths.

Comparing Future Autonomous Electric Taxis With an Existing Free-Floating Carsharing System

When considering autonomous mobility on demand (AMoD) trends, it is probably safe to assume that they will have a large market share in the near future. In the introductory phases, users of current non-autonomous mobility on demand services such as ride-hailing and carsharing are expected to be among the first users of AMoD systems. The research presented in this paper aims to estimate fares for an AMoD system in this early stages based on rental and financial data provided by a free-floating CS provider. It demonstrates that an autonomous taxi (aTaxi) model requires less vehicles to serve the same demand resulting in the possibility to lower fares. In our model, user behavior is represented by defining three maximal waiting times and three monetary values reflecting their dissatisfaction in the case, where they cannot be served in due time. Two bipartite optimization problems for vehicle-to-user and relocation assignments build the core of the introduced aTaxi model. Fleet size and relocation parameters are chosen according to a utility function representing profit and opportunity costs of users not being served. We compute the reduction in fares to break-even with the current CS profit. Results of a case-study in Munich, Germany, indicate that one aTaxi can replace 2.8–3.7 CS vehicles. The aTaxi operator can therefore reduce fares by 29%–35% to achieve the same profit assuming the same cost structures as in free-floating CS.

Exploring Preferences for Transportation Modes in an Urban Air Mobility Environment: Munich Case Study

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a recent mobility concept with the potential to reduce travel time and change travel patterns. When evaluating the introduction of UAM, understanding the potential users’ choice behavior regarding current available urban transportation modes and autonomous transportation services is essential to demand estimation. This preliminary research intends to gain insight into the travel behavior impacts of autonomous transportation modes, especially UAM, by deriving measures for transportation service attributes and identifying characteristics of potential users who might adopt autonomous transportation services, particularly the services of UAM. Thus, a stated preference questionnaire was designed and distributed in Munich metropolitan region. A main mode choice multinomial logit model and several sub-models, based on market segmentation, were estimated regarding four transportation alternatives: private car, public transportation, autonomous taxi, and autonomous flying taxi. The results indicate that travel time, travel cost, and safety may be critical determinants in autonomous transportation mode adoption. The potential consumers may be willing to pay more for using autonomous transportation modes, especially the service of UAM. Among different market segments, younger individuals, as well as older individuals with high household income, are more likely to adopt UAM. In addition, during the market entry stage, potential travelers may favor UAM particularly for performing non-commuting trips.

Optimum Utilization of Energy Consumption in Arm Robot

This paper introduced on how to minimize the energy and performance of arm robot. The objective is to design the optima; performance of the arm robot movement in performing certain tasks. There are three process involved in minimize the energy which are hardware assembly selection, Denavit Haternberg (D-H) parameters and optimization process of robot movements. A 3 degree of freedom ROB0036 robot arm is use as hardware selection. Then determine the Denavit Haternberg (D-H) parameters for robot through theoretical, simulation and practical forward and inverse kinematics. The optimization process involved how to control parameters know as position angle and the speed of motor of three main axes of arm robot. The performance is measured respect to the two movement, which are reference and optimized. The energy efficiency analysis is performs to reduce this energy consumed. The simulation resulted show that the minimum motor’s movement of joint, the less time taken to achieve of to complete the pick and place task. Directly, it results on less energy used and increase the robot arm performance.

Dynamic shared autonomous taxi system considering on-time arrival reliability

Dynamic shared autonomous taxi (SAT) systems are regarded as a promising means of improving travel flexibility. With no human drivers, SATs urgently require precise traffic information in order to plan accurate paths independently; in addition, on-time arrival is an essential service quality in SAT systems. In this study, taxis are assumed to be replaced with ride-sharing autonomous vehicles. To improve the probability of on-time arrival, the reliable path concept and collected travel time information are used to facilitate path finding for SATs, and the potential benefits are examined. Two simulation scenarios—one based on historical traffic information and the other based on real-time traffic information—are executed to evaluate the information’s usefulness in reliable path finding. In simulation results, reliable path scenarios showed a higher on-time arrival ratio than shortest path scenarios, in which the shortest path algorithm is used in path finding for SATs, and the historical information-based scenarios showed a higher on-time arrival ratio than the real-time information-based scenarios. A system-beneficial path finding method is proposed and is verified to be effective for mitigating road network congestion.

Development and Control of a Pneumatic-Actuator 3-DOF Translational Parallel Manipulator with Robot Vision.

A vision-based three degree-of-freedom translational parallel manipulator (TPM) was developed. The developed TPM has the following characteristics. First, the TPM is driven by three rodless pneumatic actuators and is designed as a horizontal structure to enlarge its horizontal working space to cover a conveyor. Then, a robot-vision system (including a webcam mounted on the TPM) collects images of objects on the conveyor and transfers them through the LabVIEW application programming interface for image processing. Since it is very difficult to achieve precise position control of the TPM due to the nonlinear couplings among the robot axes, feedback linearization is utilized to design an adaptive interval type-2 fuzzy controller with self-tuning fuzzy sliding-mode compensation (AIT2FC-STFSMC) for each rodless pneumatic actuator to attenuate nonlinearities, function approximation errors, and external disturbances. Finally, experiments proved that the vision-based three degree-of-freedom TPM was capable of accurately tracking desired trajectories and precisely executing pick-and-place movement in real time.

Financial Revolution in Republican China During 1900–37: A Survey and a New Interpretation

This paper surveys the phenomenal transformation of banking and finance, public debt, and monetary regimes during 1900–37, a period of great political instability in Chinese history. To understand why growth in these strategic sectors occurred, I highlight the role of the institutional nexus of Western treaty ports (with Shanghai being the most important) and China Maritime Customs service, a relatively autonomous tax bureaucracy. My new interpretation on the importance of this mechanism sheds new light on the role of Chinese political institutions, the impact of the West and the ongoing Great Divergence debate.

Will consumers prefer shared and pooled-use autonomous vehicles? A stated choice experiment with Swiss households

Autonomous vehicles, understood as vehicles that do not require manual steering, will cause disruptive changes in the transportation sector. Many studies on autonomous vehicles address the sustainability potential of this technology, and they assume that vehicles will no longer be privately owned and will be used with pooling options (multiple riders on a trip). However, there is currently little evidence to indicate whether this assumption is supported by user preference. To address this gap, an online choice experiment including 709 participants was conducted. It assumed the full-market penetration of autonomous vehicles and explored future mode choices, considering both short-term and long-term mobility decisions. The experiment tested the influence of 15 short-term and 13 long-term decision instruments to encourage the adoption of shared and pooled use of autonomous vehicles, like autonomous taxis and autonomous public transport. Our findings partly support the assumption in the existing literature that vehicles are likely to be used in a pooled mode. In the control condition, 61% of Swiss respondents preferred pooled autonomous vehicles over private autonomous cars. Moreover, stated preferences indicated that combined instruments influencing comfort, cost, and time are likely to increase the proportion of pooled uses of autonomous vehicles.

Empty vehicle redistribution and fleet size in autonomous taxi systems

This study investigates empty vehicle redistribution algorithms for personal rapid transit and autonomous taxi services. The focus is on passenger service and operator cost. A new redistribution algorithm is presented in this study: index-based redistribution (IBR). IBR is a proactive method, meaning it takes into account both current demand and anticipated future demand, in contrast to reactive methods, which act based on current demand only. From information on currently waiting for passengers, predicted near-future demand and projected arrival of vehicles, IBR calculates an index for each vehicle station, and redistribution is done based on this index. Seven different algorithm combinations are evaluated using a test case in Paris Saclay, France (20 stations and 100 vehicles). A combination of simple nearest neighbours and IBR is shown to be promising. Its results outperform the other methods tested in peak and off-peak demand, in terms of average and maximum passenger waiting times as well as station queue length. The effect of vehicle fleet size on generalised cost is analysed. Waiting times, mileage and fleet size are taken into account while assessing this generalised cost.

It’s up to us: Policies to improve climate outcomes from automated vehicles

Vehicle automation is coming, but environmental and energy imperatives are NOT what’s motivating it. In fact, its energy and environmental outcomes are deeply uncertain. The promise of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is greater safety and mobility. The question is: How do we achieve that promise while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and saving energy?Future AV scenarios range widely, from dramatically higher to dramatically lower GHG emissions. Fortunately, the best case for the environment is also the best case for business, for the economy, and for safe and affordable mobility: autonomous Taxi fleets that operate clean vehicles, encourage ridesharing, and are integrated with other public and private transportation modes. Governments, businesses, drivers and riders make decisions that can increase or decrease the likelihood of the best-case scenario.The stakes are very high, as the transportation sector is now the largest source of U.S. GHG emissions.Emissions are equal to (1) emissions per-vehicle-mile, multiplied by (2) vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). This paper explores the business, technology and behavioral decisions with respect to automation that have the greatest impact along these two dimensions. It then identifies policy interventions that could influence these key decisions to achieve the best GHG outcomes. AVs are an important international issue, although this paper is focused on the United States.

Taxi dispatching strategies with compensations

Urban mobility efficiency is of utmost importance in big cities. Taxi vehicles are key elements in daily traffic activity. The advance of ICT and geo-positioning systems has given rise to new opportunities for improving the efficiency of taxi fleets in terms of waiting times of passengers, cost and time for drivers, traffic density, CO2 emissions, etc., by using more informed, intelligent dispatching. Still, the explicit spatial and temporal components, as well as the scale and, in particular, the dynamicity of the problem of pairing passengers and taxis in big towns, render traditional approaches for solving standard assignment problem useless for this purpose, and call for intelligent approximation strategies based on domain-specific heuristics. Furthermore, taxi drivers are often autonomous actors and may not agree to participate in assignments that, though globally efficient, may not be sufficently beneficial for them individually.This paper presents a new heuristic algorithm for taxi assignment to customers that considers taxi reassignments if this may lead to globally better solutions. In addition, as such new assignments may reduce the expected revenues of individual drivers, we propose an economic compensation scheme to make individually rational drivers agree to proposed modifications in their assigned clients. We carried out a set of experiments, where several commonly used assignment strategies are compared to three different instantiations of our heuristic algorithm. The results indicate that our proposal has the potential to reduce customer waiting times in fleets of autonomous taxis, while being also beneficial from an economic point of view.

The influence of an autonomous driving car operation on commuters’ departure times

Studies on new transportation services such as autonomous taxis and autonomous shuttles are underway in various cities around the world. Most of these studies discuss the effects (e.g., vehicle miles traveled, travel time, delay rate, and so on) of introducing new modes of transportation. Research on the introducing autonomous taxis on commuters’ departure times is limited. This study analyzed how closely commuters can get autonomous taxi services at the desired departure time. The departure times between using private cars and using autonomous taxis were compared to the commuters’ desired departure times. For the comparison, it was assumed that all commuters use autonomous taxis instead of private cars. The results revealed that many commuters could not depart at the desired time and had to make adjustments to their time of departure. This result indicates that a travel reservation system or a dynamic pricing system will be required before autonomous taxis become popular.

A case study of a last-mile solution in a high-density residential neighborhood

Studies on new transportation services such as autonomous taxis and autonomous shuttles are underway in various cities around the world. Most of these studies discuss the effects (e.g., vehicle miles traveled, travel time, delay rate, and so on) of introducing new modes of transportation. This study analyzes the impact of providing autonomous minibus service in a dense residential area. Regular buses usually run along main roads with more than one lane, but minibuses can operate along roads with a single lane. There are many one-way roads around high-density apartments such as in Korean cities, so providing a last-mile solution can have a positive effect and increase the demand for public transportation. In addition, this study compared the level-of- service between different modes of transportation (e.g., car, walking, and minibus), unlike previous studies in which minibus demand was fixed. The results showed that minibuses did not replace the trunk traffic. These results suggested that minibus service should be used as an auxiliary for trunk traffic. According to the scenarios provided by the minibus, it was analyzed that the minibus service increased the public transport mode share by 3-5%.

Constructive methods to reduce thermal influences on the accuracy of industrial robots

Abstract Due to their kinematics and their mobility, industrial robot systems offer a flexible, adaptable basis. An influencing variable, which is particularly relevant for processes with long process times, is the thermal heating and the associated thermal drift of the tool center point. The maximum deviation from the actual nominal position can reach up to 1.5 mm. To counteract these displacements, a cooling strategy or a targeted preheating can be installed. Both possibilities were evaluated under constructive, energetic and economic aspects and implemented on at least one axis of an industrial robot. Furthermore, a structural thermal decoupling and optimized design of the respective components were carried out. The results can help to reduce the influence of thermal heating and the associated thermal drift of the TCP by structural support without using cost-intensive measures with additional hardware and software on external computers for compensating the errors.

Dynamic Modeling, Simulation, and Experimental Verification of a Wafer Handling SCARA Robot With Decoupling Servo Control

In this paper, we propose a novel coordinated control method based on decoupling servo control to design a 4-DOF direct-drive SCARA robot for wafer handling purpose. As the basis of decoupling servo control, the dynamic model of the SCARA robot is obtained with two methods, the Newton-Euler equation, and Lagrangian equation. The validity of this SCARA dynamic equation is confirmed by these two methods. Due to disturbance and model uncertainty, three PD plus robust controllers are individually applied to three axes of the SCARA robot, together with decoupling control on three physically dynamically highly coupled robotic arms. The inverse dynamics of the SCARA robot is analyzed by feedback linearization, and the experimental results show that above PD plus robust controllers and decoupling control reduce the position tracking error effectively. Performance meets with the high speed and high precision requirements in the wafer handling process. The experimental data shows that the decoupling control algorithm makes the SCARA robot performance improved a lot. The position errors during dynamic tracking movement and the static errors are reduced by 4 to 20 times.

Effects of driverless vehicles – Comparing simulations to get a broader picture

Driverless vehicles have the potential to significantly affect the transport system, society, and environment. However, there are still many unanswered questions regarding what the development will look like, and there are several contradictory forces. This paper addresses the effects of driverless vehicles by combining the results from 26 simulation studies. Each simulation study focuses on a particular case, e.g. a certain mobility concept or geographical region. By combining and analysing the results from the 26 simulation studies, an overall picture of the effects of driverless vehicles is presented. In the paper, the following perspectives are considered: what types of application of driverless vehicles have been studied in literature; what effects these simulation studies predict; and what research gaps still exist related to the effects of driverless vehicles. The analysis shows that it is primarily driverless taxi applications in urban areas that have been studied. Some parameters, such as trip cost and waiting time, show small variations between the simulation studies. Other parameters, such as vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), show larger variations and depend heavily on the assumptions concerning value of time and level of sharing. To increase the understanding of system level effects of driverless vehicles, simulations of more complex applications and aspects such as land use, congestion and energy consumption are considered.

Effects of driverless vehicles

Driverless vehicles have the potential to significantly affect the transport system, society, and environment. However, there are still many unanswered questions regarding what the development will look like, and there are several contradictory forces. This paper addresses the effects of driverless vehicles by combining the results from 26 simulation studies. Each simulation study focuses on a particular case, e.g. a certain mobility concept or geographical region. By combining and analysing the results from the 26 simulation studies, an overall picture of the effects of driverless vehicles is presented. In the paper, the following perspectives are considered: what types of application of driverless vehicles have been studied in literature; what effects these simulation studies predict; and what research gaps still exist related to the effects of driverless vehicles. The analysis shows that it is primarily driverless taxi applications in urban areas that have been studied. Some parameters, such as trip cost and waiting time, show small variations between the simulation studies. Other parameters, such as vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), show larger variations and depend heavily on the assumptions concerning value of time and level of sharing. To increase the understanding of system level effects of driverless vehicles, simulations of more complex applications and aspects such as land use, congestion and energy consumption are considered.

Estimating Advertisement Revenue for Robocabs

Abstract Connected, autonomous driving and social sustainability issues in urban environments demand to rethink the way, in which public and private transport is financed. The idea of in-vehicle advertisement is often discussed in press and literature as the prevailing solution for a cheap or even free-to-use mobility (see e.g. Gergshorn, 2017; Bertoncello et al., 2016). However, a transparent calculation of the revenue potentials and distributions is still missing. Within this paper, a data-driven approach is conducted. Based on real-world datasets about mobility demand and supply, a fleet of autonomous taxis – so-called Robocabs – is simulated and the advertisement revenue for multiple trips in New York City (NYC) is predicted. Within the analysis, we formulate three revenue model scenarios: One conservative and two, which focus especially on new advertisement opportunities for Robocabs. The conducted calculations show that advertisement approaches are not sufficient to guarantee a free-to-use Taxicab fleet: The average proportion of advertising revenue relative to the taxi fare varies from 1.99% in the first scenario to 5.56% in the third. Additionally, the dispersion of per-trip-revenue increases too, posing additional challenges with respect to the attribution of the value.

Tax Systems and Development

This paper analyzes the optimal tax system consisting of the tax rate and the capacity of the tax administration. I challenge the conventional wisdom that tax rates and tax administrations’ capacity are complements showing that their relationship depends on a country’s level of development. Accordingly, developed and developing countries should set higher tax rates and administrative capacities than moderately developed countries. The discrepancy compared to observed practices regarding administrative capacities can be resolved by an aspect previously disregarded in the tax systems literature: the degree of tax administrations’ autonomy. With autonomous tax administrations, capacity increases monotonically with development as suggested by the empirical literature. Finally, I analyze how fighting tax havens affects non-haven countries’ tax revenues. While developed countries benefit, the same applies to developing countries only if tax administrators and lawmakers tightly coordinate their actions.