Enterprise Ireland supports the research and development of this project through innovation vouchers.

Motivation

Car sharing is a model of car rental in which people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. Car-sharing companies use dedicated pick-up points that range from a few to a decentralised network of parking locations. Currently the majority of car sharing companies do not provide one-way bookings due to a failure of current booking systems. In a one-way booking the customer drops off the vehicle at a different location from which she picked it up. A main issue is to ensure that cars are available at the locations from which they are requested. In order to address this issue, car-sharing companies typically have to employ dedicated drivers who are in charge of moving cars to required locations. A key requirement is to maximise car usage while minimising car relocation costs. In a nutshell, this project is addressing the research and development of scalable and dynamic car-share booking software that will allow for one-way bookings. Of particular importance to the project is the development of a dynamic pricing algorithm that stimulates clients to relocate vehicles.

Scientific basis

The project investigates the definition and implementation of algorithms that manage client bookings and vehicle relocations in one-way car-sharing systems. Work on the project consists of the following phases:

• Definition of a scalable algorithm that implements the core of the booking system. The algorithm will allow clients to book one-way journeys while making sure that parking-space constraints are met.
• Definition of a dynamic-pricing extension to the core booking algorithm to support the increase in the number of accepted bookings while lowering relocation costs. On the one hand, if a client booking request cannot be satisfied, the system will offer similar journeys at discounted prices (e.g., different booking times or locations, or different vehicle types). On the other hand, the system will also offer journeys at discounted prices in order to stimulate clients to relocate vehicles needed to perform already accepted bookings or to free parking spaces. Relocations are typically introduced by vehicle breakdowns or late returns.
• Development of a system demonstrator. The demonstrator will provide interfaces for the system administrators and for car-sharing clients. Administrators will be able to configure the system's parameters (e.g., number of vehicles, locations, number of parking spaces, pricing model, etc.) as well as to monitor and change the system's state (e.g., manually change vehicle schedules, manually remove bookings, etc.). Clients will be able to use the system to request, modify or cancel bookings. The system will also provide interfaces for the integration with existing car-sharing and car-rental systems.

Results

To date we have defined and implemented an algorithm that schedules available cars to fulfill client bookings. Current work focuses on the definition of a dynamic-pricing algorithm that stimulates clients to book vehicles so as to minimise relocation costs.