An On-Demand Passenger Transportation Architecture Based on a Mediated Contract-Net

Abstract

In this work we present an architecture for the on-demand planning of passenger transportation requests. The planning system is modeled as a multi-agent environment where client and vehicle agents negotiate using a Mediated Contract-Net (MCN). The negotiation consents to involve clients in the final solution, avoiding to incur in estimations of their utility functions (as in centralized systems). On the other hand, the Mediator role in the MCN allows a more global view, improving the solutions of a pure market-based system.