Autonomous dial-a-ride transit introductory overview

This paper introduces a modernized version of many-to-few dial-a-ride called autonomous dial-a-ride transit (ADART), which employs fully-automated order-entry and routing-and-scheduling systems that reside exclusively on board the vehicle. Here, ''fully automated'' means that under normal operation, the customer is the only human involved in the entire process of requesting a ride, assigning trips, scheduling arrivals and routing the vehicle. There are no telephone operators to receive calls, nor any central dispatchers to assign trips to vehicles, nor any human planning a route. The vehicles' computers assign trip demands and plan routes optimally among themselves, and the drivers' only job is to obey instructions from their vehicle's computer. Consequently, an ADART vehicle fleet covers a large service area without any centralized supervision. In effect, the vehicles behave like a swarm of ants accomplishing their chore without anyone in charge.