Towards Participatory Design of Multi-agent Approach to Transport Demands

TL;DR

This paper explores participatory design methods for multi-agent systems in transportation, specifically focusing on taxi dispatch, to improve system performance and stakeholder satisfaction through user involvement.

Contribution

It introduces a participatory process for designing socio-technical architectures in taxi dispatch systems, enhancing stakeholder engagement and system effectiveness.

Findings

Participatory design improves stakeholder satisfaction.

Concurrent dispatching strategies increase passenger satisfaction.

New socio-technical architecture enhances taxi dispatch efficiency.

Abstract

The design of multi-agent based simulations (MABS) is up to now mainly done in laboratories and based on designers' understanding of the activities to be simulated. Domain experts have little chance to directly validate agent behaviors. To fill this gap, we are investigating participatory methods of design, which allow users to participate in the design the pickup and delivery problem (PDP) in the taxi planning problem. In this paper, we present a participatory process for designing new socio-technical architectures to afford the taxi dispatch for this transportation system. The proposed dispatch architecture attempts to increase passenger satisfaction more globally, by concurrently dispatching multiple taxis to the same number of passengers in the same geographical region, and vis-avis human driver and dispatcher satisfaction.