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In order to commute by carpooling, individuals need to communicate, negotiate and coordinate, and in most cases adapt their daily schedule to enable cooperation. Through negotiation, individuals (agents) can reach complex agreements in an iterative way. The success of negotiation highly depends on the lifestyle factors that influence the departure time decision of the individuals. This paper presents a conceptual design of an agent-based model of a set of candidate carpoolers that serves as a proof of concept and is an extension of a simple negotiation model for carpooling. The proposed model extends the previous one by incorporating a more realistic departure time preference function for each agent by taking; (i) traveling, (ii) socio-economic characteristics, and (iii) time pressure factors into account for a specific activity. From the simulation’s discussions, it is possible to portray the real picture of people’s preferences for selecting the optimal departure time. The Janus (multi-agent) platform is used for simulating the interactions of autonomous agents with their agenda. The future research will mainly focus on incorporating different daily activities in addition to work and home activities.

In order to commute by carpooling, individuals need to communicate, negotiate and coordinate, and in most cases adapt their agenda (daily schedule) to enable cooperation. Through negotiation, agents (individuals) can reach complex agreements in an iterative way which meet the criteria for the successful negotiation. The procedure of negotiation and trip execution in the carpooling consists of a number of steps namely; (i) explore the social network, (ii) negotiate agenda to reach complex agreements, and (iii) long term trip execution. This paper presents a conceptual design of an organizational-based and agent-based model (ABM) of a set of candidate carpoolers that serves as a proof of concept and is an extension of a simple negotiation model for carpooling. The proposed model is used for simulating the interactions of autonomous agents with their agenda and explore social networks to initiate agent communication to trigger the negotiation process. The schedule adaptation depends on the preferences among feasible schedules of the individuals, generally depends on both the time of day and on the duration of the participation. In this simulation of the evolution we consider a daily schedule that consists of three activities (home, work and home) and a chain of two intermediate trips (home-to-work and work-to-home) only. We carried out a validation study of our results with real data collected in Flanders, Belgium. From the simulation’s discussions, it is possible to understand the causes why people can adapt their daily schedule to enable cooperation in order to carpool. The future research will mainly focus on enhancing the mechanism for negotiation between agents. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement nr 270833

In order to commute by carpooling, individuals need to communicate, negotiate and coordinate, and in most cases adapt their daily schedule to enable cooperation. Through negotiation, agents (individuals) can reach complex agreements in an iterative way, which meets the criteria for the successful negotiation. The procedure of negotiation and trip execution in the long-term carpooling consists of a number of steps namely; (i) decision to carpool, (ii) exploration and communication, (iii) negotiation, (iv) coordination and schedule adaptation, (v) long term trip execution (carpooling), (vi) negotiation during carpooling and (vii) carpool termination and exploration for new carpool. This paper presents a conceptual design of an agent-based model (ABM) of a set of candidate carpoolers. A proof of concept implementation is presented. The proposed model is used for simulating the interactions between autonomous agents. The model enables communication to trigger the negotiation process; it measures the effect of pick-drop and shopping activities on the carpooling trips. Carpooling for commuting is simulated: we consider a set of two intermediate trips (home-to-work and work-to-home) for the long-term carpooling. Schedule adaptation during negotiation depends on personal preferences. Trip timing and duration are crucial factors. We carried out a validation study of our results with real data (partial) collected in Flanders, Belgium. Simulation results show the effect of constraining activities on the carpooling trips. The future research will mainly focus on enhancing the mechanisms for communication and negotiation between agents.

In order to commute by carpooling, individuals need to communicate, negotiate and coordinate, and in most cases adapt their agenda (daily schedule) to enable cooperation. Through negotiation, agents (individuals) can reach complex agreements in an iterative way which meet the criteria for the successful negotiation. The procedure of negotiation and trip execution in the carpooling consists of a number of steps namely; (i) explore the social network, (ii) negotiate agenda to reach complex agreements, and (iii) long term trip execution. This paper presents a conceptual design of an organizational-based and agent-based model (ABM) of a set of candidate carpoolers that serves as a proof of concept and is an extension of a simple negotiation model for carpooling. The proposed model is used for simulating the interactions of autonomous agents with their agenda and explore social networks to initiate agent communication to trigger the negotiation process. The schedule adaptation depends on the preferences among feasible schedules of the individuals, generally depends on both the time of day and on the duration of the participation. In this simulation of the evolution we consider a daily schedule that consists of three activities (home, work and home) and a chain of two intermediate trips (home-to-work and work-to-home) only. We carried out a validation study of our results with real data collected in Flanders, Belgium. From the simulation’s discussions, it is possible to understand the causes why people can adapt their daily schedule to enable cooperation in order to carpool. The future research will mainly focus on enhancing the mechanism for negotiation between agents.

In the carpooling, individuals need to communicate, negotiate and in most cases adapt their daily schedule to enable cooperation. Through negotiation, agents (individuals) can reach complex agreements in an iterative way which meet the criteria for successful negotiation. The result of the negotiation depends on “negotiation mechanism” used to match and on the behavior of the agents involved in the negotiation process. This paper presents an organizational and agent-based model for commuting by candidate carpoolers using a simple negotiation mechanism aimed at finding an acceptable agreement between agents to carpool. Initially, the agents involved in exploration process, search for their partners via some kind of Agent Communication Language (ACL); after finding potential partners, they start a negotiation to find matched partner to carpool. After having found a good match, the agents can carpool for a specified time period. The agents join the carpool group when the negotiation is successful and leave the carpool group when the agreed time period is expired. Agents can be part of several carpool groups sequentially. The first implementation used home and work locations as well as preferred trip start times and carpool periods determined by uniformly sampling given sets. Furthermore a simplistic negotiation mechanism used roughly to produce possible results for the synthetic data. An automated negotiation model is implemented and validated through simulation. The Janus multi-agent platform is used. Future research will mainly focus on the development of behaviorally sound negotiation mechanism. Hussain, I (reprint author), Hasselt Univ, Transportat Res Inst IMOB, Wetenschapspk 5 Bus 6, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium. iftikhar.hussain@uhasselt.be