AV Pickup Location Selection With Privacy-Preserving Mediation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional transportation service provisioning systems using autonomous vehicle fleets face inefficiencies due to the lack of shared location data between service assignment systems and third-party autonomous vehicle systems, leading to suboptimal pickup and drop-off locations for users.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method that selectively shares user location data with third-party autonomous vehicle systems, allowing the service assignment system to optimize the selection of autonomous vehicle pickup locations based on objective functions that consider walking distance, difficulty, and user preferences.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If user location data is not shared with third-party autonomous vehicle systems, then data privacy is protected, but pickup location optimization is compromised leading to longer walking distances
Solution Approach 1:
The service assignment system acts as an intermediary between the user and the third-party autonomous vehicle system. It receives the user's actual location, processes it through objective functions to determine optimized pickup locations, and communicates only the necessary location information to the autonomous vehicle system without exposing sensitive user data. This mediator role enables location optimization while maintaining privacy boundaries.
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments the location data handling process into distinct functional components: the service assignment system handles privacy-sensitive data processing and objective function evaluation, while the autonomous vehicle system receives only the processed pickup location information. This segmentation allows each system to perform its specialized function without unnecessary exposure to sensitive data.
2Device complexity
If multiple AV stopping locations are provided without user location context, then system complexity is reduced, but walking distance optimization is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The service assignment system performs preliminary optimization of the pickup location before the autonomous vehicle arrives. By evaluating multiple candidate locations through objective functions that consider walking distance, difficulty, and user preferences, the system pre-determines the optimal pickup location and provides it to the autonomous vehicle system, eliminating the need for the vehicle to evaluate multiple locations on its own.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameters provided to the autonomous vehicle system from multiple unoptimized stopping locations to a single optimized pickup location derived from objective function evaluation. This parameter transformation enables the autonomous vehicle to execute the optimized route without needing to independently evaluate multiple location options, balancing complexity and optimization.
3Adaptability or versatility
If autonomous vehicles travel to non-optimized pickup locations, then operational flexibility is maintained, but user satisfaction and operational efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback through objective functions that evaluate pickup locations based on multiple criteria including walking distance, walking difficulty, and user preferences. This feedback mechanism guides the service assignment system to select optimized pickup locations that balance operational flexibility with user satisfaction and operational efficiency, creating a closed-loop optimization process.
Data Source
AI summary
Example implementations are directed to systems and methods for providing transportation service using an autonomous vehicle (AV) of a third-party system based on multiple stopping locations. A service assignment system receives, from a user, a service request from the user for a transportation service. The system can detect a location of the user and determine whether to share the user location with the third-party system. Based on the determining, the system provides either the user location or a selected pickup location, whereby the selected pickup location is a pickup location determined by the service assignment system or the user. In response to providing the user location or the selected pickup location, the system receives multiple AV stopping locations from the third-party system. An AV stopping location is selected from the multiple AV stopping locations. The AV is then triggered to travel to the selected AV stopping location.