Vehicle Sharing Facility Management System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional private hire vehicle allocation systems do not efficiently utilize vehicle capacity when bookings have fewer passengers than the vehicle's seating capacity, leading to unoptimized resource use and increased congestion during peak times.
Innovation Solution
A system that automatically identifies and pairs customers with shared vehicle booking requests, calculates a convenient route, and allocates vehicles and drivers to optimize capacity usage, reducing the number of vehicles needed and minimizing congestion and emissions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a vehicle is allocated exclusively to an individual booking, then the booking requirements are satisfied, but the vehicle capacity is not efficiently utilized when the number of passengers is less than the vehicle seating capacity
Solution Approach 1:
The system combines multiple separate bookings into a single shared vehicle allocation by identifying bookings with overlapping routes and time windows. The route sharing module merges compatible bookings to form shared routes, allowing multiple passengers to travel together in one vehicle, thereby improving capacity utilization while still meeting all individual booking requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The vehicle allocation system serves multiple functions simultaneously: it fulfills individual booking requirements, optimizes vehicle capacity utilization, reduces the total number of vehicles needed, and minimizes congestion. By making the allocation system universal rather than dedicated to single bookings, it achieves multiple benefits from a single allocation decision.
2Ease of operation
If more vehicles are allocated to meet peak demand, then customer service levels are maintained, but road congestion and carbon emissions increase
Solution Approach 1:
By merging multiple bookings into shared routes, the system reduces the total number of vehicles required to serve peak demand. Instead of allocating separate vehicles to each booking, the system combines compatible bookings into fewer shared vehicles, thereby maintaining customer service levels while reducing congestion and emissions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system maximizes the continuous utilization of each vehicle by optimizing route sharing to ensure vehicles are consistently occupied with multiple passengers throughout their operational periods. This continuous useful action reduces the need for additional vehicles during peak times, thereby reducing harmful environmental effects.
3Loss of energy
If vehicle sharing is arranged on an ad hoc basis, then some capacity utilization improvement is achieved, but the process becomes haphazard and unstructured
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements structured feedback mechanisms where the route sharing module continuously analyzes booking patterns, route compatibility, and vehicle allocation outcomes. This feedback enables the system to learn from past allocations and optimize future sharing arrangements, transforming ad hoc sharing into a structured, data-driven process that improves capacity utilization systematically.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes key parameters such as route compatibility thresholds, time window overlaps, and vehicle capacity metrics to systematically optimize sharing arrangements. By adjusting these parameters based on demand patterns and performance targets, the system transforms haphazard sharing into a structured optimization process that achieves consistent capacity utilization improvements.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and apparatus for managing a networked vehicle resource sharing facility, the method and system provide for:(a) detecting a plurality of inputs corresponding to vehicle booking requests, wherein each of the plurality of vehicle booking requests contains data identifying a drop-off location and a pick-up location that is distinct from the pick-up location of each of the other customers;(b) accessing a data structure containing stored data relating to user authorisations for using the vehicle-sharing facility to verify whether each of the vehicle booking requests relates to a customer authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility; andfor those vehicle booking requests relating to customers identified as being authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility:(c) automatically selecting customers to share a vehicle and calculating a suggested route for the vehicle using the pick-up location and drop-off locations of the customers and one or more stored vehicle-share criteria.