Real-Time Routing and Scheduling of On-Demand Autonomous Customized Bus Systems

The integration of autonomous vehicles and on-demand customized bus systems is expected to be beneficial for responding to real-time demands. This paper investigates the autonomous customized bus (ACB) system that leverages passenger demand prediction to enhance service quality and vehicle utilization. A novel ACB service design optimization model that determines vehicle movements and passenger-to-vehicle assignment is developed for the real-time routing and scheduling problem. Then, a rolling horizon approach, incorporating travel demand prediction, reactive adjustment and proactive dispatching, is proposed to address the studied problem. The performance of the introduced ACB system is evaluated using smartcard data from Beijing and the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm. Results show that the proposed ACB system can effectively improve system performance and service level in terms of operating cost and passenger waiting time compared to reactive operations.