Towards an Integrated Mobility and Logistics Network for Autonomous Vehicles: Review and Opportunities of the Agent-based Approach

Abstract

— Similar to the present, the future Autonomous the logistics sectors will adopt self-driving technology sooner Vehicles (AVs) road network will very likely integrate vehicles than passenger transport (4). for both mobility and logistics purposes. However, the Assessing the impacts of AVs on society is of high performances of such systems are still not clear. Due to the agent-based approach’s advantages in performing importance for future decision making. Thanks to its ability in the complex spatial-temporal relation between agents, various performing the complex spatial-temporal relationships studies adopt it for assessing the impacts of AVs, either on the between different stakeholders (5), the agent-based approach is system of mobility or on the system of logistics. Nonetheless, capable of analysing various perspectives of AVs’ impacts, most of these current studies are focusing on the two systems in which includes travel behavioural, land-use, environmental isolation. Within the domain of passenger mobility, many and economic. Two main benefits exist when modelling AVs relevant papers/reviews can be found. Instead, an overall review by the agent technology: first, more elasticity is allowed when of the current agent technology developments in autonomous conducting different scenario analyses. Second, by simulating logistics is lacking. the movements and interactions of autonomous agents, In order to fill this gap, this paper reports on a systematic researchers can acquire a better overview of the different review of autonomous logistics agent-based simulation studies. impacts and outputs. Hence, the agent-based approach is Thirty-two papers are extracted from ISI Web of Science and adopted by various studies for modelling the overall impacts of Google Scholar through keywords search. Generally, the future scenarios in the mobility network. agent-based approach proved applicable for analysing the autonomous logistics among all sectors (indoor, controlled Autonomous logistical vehicles will inevitably share outdoor, long-haul & last-mile), and it is still an emerging topic, networks with other road users in the near future. Most likely, especially for the long-haul and urban environments. Finally, the future road network will integrate AVs for both mobility our research offers an overview regarding the mobility and and logistics purposes. Since the mobility network holds logistics integration, which will be referential for both AV relatively mature modelling studies using the agent-based researchers and urban planners. approach (6), the integration of logistics through this method could be straightforward.