2022 Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 1-10
In this paper, Horizontal Elevator, HE, is proposed as a transportation system for autonomous vehicles which satisfies the following two conditions: passengers do not need to reserve in advance to utilize it and vehicles operate only on a designated network. HE has a single vehicle moving on a line represented as a one-dimensional network. An optimization problem is defined to obtain an operation plan for the HE. Selective Collective (SC), one of the heuristics for the elevator operation problems, is applied for solving the problem. Simulation experiments of the HE under some conditions were conducted and followings were revealed. First, SC is found as a good solution method regarding calculation speed, optimality and ease for passengers to understand how to utilize HEs. Second, HEs are expected to be applied to the network with multiple lines where passengers can transfer mutually.
