A Combinatorial Auction Based Algorithm for Flexible Seat Reservation Systems

Abstract

We present algorithms for flexible seat distribution problems, which is defined as a problem to give an appropriate travel plan to each passenger after receiving their requests concerning their travel demands. Seat distribution problems occur when a flexible seat reservation system is implemented in which passengers are allowed to reserve seats by submitting their demands instead of specifying trains. To solve the seat distribution problem, we have formalized it as a winner determination problem of the combinatorial auction mechanism. It should be noted that difficulty of the seat distribution problem varies depending on instances of the problem, because the number of demands often varies and users' requests sometimes converge on particular trains. This suggests that in order to get solutions with high quality, algorithms that appropriately control the search space are indispensable. In this paper, we present three kinds of such algorithms for the seat distribution problem together with the results of several experiments.