Autonomous vehicle relocation problem in a parking facility

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) can be stacked behind each other like valet parking due to their self-parking capability to increase land utilization and decrease the parking space allocation. However, such parking arrangements cause blockage and necessitate AVs relocation inside the car-park whenever a blocked AV is summoned. In this paper, we investigate AV parking spot selection based on their arrival and departure times to minimize the number of such relocation movements. We study both full and partial information scenarios in which we have exactly a priori information, and no a priori information about arrival and departure time, respectively. The results show that parking in the spot with the lowest blockage probability can decrease the number of relocation movements. Also, our analysis shows that retrieving vehicles from the rear side does not have a significant impact on the number of relocation movements.