Taxi despatch: a fuzzy rule approach

The problem of taxi despatch from a pool of taxies, either waiting at the taxi stand or plying free in the city is addressed. Calls for taxies may emanate from different parts of the city. The taxi stand operator is aware about the status (i.e. waiting, busy, free) and position of all taxies associated with the taxi stand at any time. While despatching the taxi for a call, the operator should consider its vicinity with the calling point in order to reduce the service time. On the other hand, the operator should be fair to all the taxi drivers, and maintain proper distribution of opportunities to each one of them. Two rules; 'nearest vehicle first' and 'least utilized vehicle first' are normally used to meet the above objectives. However, both these objectives cannot be simultaneously met with any one rule. In this paper we propose a fuzzy combination of the two rules to fulfill both the objectives at the same time. The fuzzy combination approach has the potential to take many such contradicting parameters into simultaneous consideration. A simulation model is also presented to demonstrate the results of such fuzzy combination of rules.