Papers for

transportation system designers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Strategyproof bridge placement minimizes costs with optional preferences

Mechanism Design for Bridge Location with Optional Preferences

Abstract: We study the bridge location problem with optional preferences, where two separated regions each contain one prelocated facility. Each agent has a private location and a private preference specifying a nonempty subset of the two facilities in which she is interested. Her individual cost is measured by one of three natural variants: the maximum, the sum, or the minimum of her distances to the facilities in which she is interested. The social planner must design deterministic strategyproof mechanisms that elicit truthful reports, choose the location of a connecting bridge, and approximately minimize either the social cost or the maximum cost. Our main results are as follows. For the social cost objective, we design optimal mechanisms for the max-variant and sum-variant costs, and provide a 3-approximation mechanism for the min-variant cost, and establish a lower bound of 2 for the min-variant. For the maximum cost objective, we give 5/3-approximation mechanisms for the max-variant and sum-variant costs, and a 3-approximation mechanism for the min-variant cost; we also prove a common lower bound of 5/3 that applies to all three cost variants under the maximum cost objective.

Wed 30 SeptComputer Science and Game Theory
The gist
This paper studies how to place a bridge between two facilities so that people who want to use one or both facilities have the least travel cost possible. Each person has a private location and a preference for which facilities they care about. The challenge is to design a method that makes people honestly share their locations and preferences while placing the bridge at a location that keeps overall travel costs low. The authors give optimal and approximate methods for different ways of measuring travel costs and prove limits on how well any method can do.
Open → 2609.39097v1

Modeling and controlling systems of systems using agent-based simulations

Agent-Based Modeling of Systems of Systems

Abstract: This paper deals with the generic modeling of systems of systems (SoSs) using agent-based modeling. SoSs are large-scale systems, including numerous-possibly heterogeneous-interacting component systems evolving in a dynamic environment. The aim of this paper is to provide generic formalism allowing to represent and control the whole complexity of a SoS using agent-based simulations. In particular, organizational aspects of SoSs are managed with the Agent-Group-Role model. Functional aspects, guiding SoSs to accomplish their global goals, are handled via a functional specification. Multilevel aspects are modeled with the Influence Reaction Model for Multilevel Simulation (IRM4MLS) agent-based meta-model. Models generated using this formalism encompass static and dynamic aspects of SoSs. They consider reorganization of SoSs caused by changes of goals or subsystem capacity. All these elements are illustrated in this paper using a SoS case study of Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles initiated by the Intelligent Transportation for Dynamic Environment (InTraDE) European project to automate the port container logistic.

Wed 23 SeptMultiagent Systems
The gist
Large systems often consist of many smaller, interacting parts that change over time. The authors introduce a way to model these complex systems using agents, which are small independent units that can act and interact. They use special frameworks to represent the roles, functions, and different levels within the system. This approach helps manage changes such as shifting goals or resource availability. They demonstrate their method with an example about self-driving vehicles in a port.
Open → 2609.27573v1