Developing a Multi-agent Framework of the Ridesharing System Considering Pick-up/drop-off Points in the Anylogic Simulation Software

The ridesharing service matches one or more passengers with a driver through an online matching platform. Faced with the problem of extra detours for drivers in the ridesharing system, this paper introduces pick-up/drop-off points allowing passengers to walk from their origination to a pick-up point or from a drop-off point to their destination. To validate this method, we build a multi-agent model for the ridesharing problem considering pick-up/drop-off (PUDO) points, in which by defining a Controller Agent, the Passenger Agent can choose to use PUDO or not. Based upon it, an application is designed in Anylogic software, capable of dealing with ridesharing requests on a real road network and providing matching decisions with and without PUDO. Moreover, an experiment is provided in this paper, and the results demonstrate that PUDO can greatly reduce the driver's detour and travel time and boost the matching rate.