A Collaborative Multiagent Taxi-Dispatch System

This paper presents a novel multiagent approach to automating taxi dispatch that services current bookings in a distributed fashion. The existing system in use by a taxi operator in Singapore and elsewhere attempts to increase customer satisfaction locally, by sequentially dispatching nearby taxis to service customers. The proposed dispatch system attempts to increase customer satisfaction more globally, by concurrently dispatching multiple taxis to the same number of customers in the same geographical region, and vis-`a-vis human driver satisfaction. To realize the system, a multiagent architecture is proposed, populated with software collaborative agents that can actively negotiate on behalf of taxi drivers in groups of size N for available customer bookings. Theoretically, an analysis of the boundary and optimal multiagent taxi-dispatch situations is presented along with a discussion of their implications. Experimentally, the operational efficiency of the existing and proposed dispa...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TASE
• Authors: Kiam Tian Seow, Nam Hai Dang, Der-Horng Lee
• Keywords: Customer, Customer Satisfaction, Multiagent, Software Engineering, TASE 2010