Dynamic Stochastic Electric Vehicle Routing with Safe Reinforcement Learning  
Journal article, 2022

Dynamic routing of electric commercial vehicles can be a challenging problem since besides the uncertainty of energy consumption there are also random customer requests. This paper introduces the Dynamic Stochastic Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (DS-EVRP). A Safe Reinforcement Learning method is proposed for solving the problem. The objective is to minimize expected energy consumption in a safe way, which means also minimizing the risk of battery depletion while en route by planning charging whenever necessary. The key idea is to learn offline about the stochastic customer requests and energy consumption using Monte Carlo simulations, to be able to plan the route predictively and safely online. The method is evaluated using simulations based on energy consumption data from a realistic traffic model for the city of Luxembourg and a high-fidelity vehicle model. The results indicate that it is possible to save energy at the same time maintaining reliability by planning the routes and charging in an anticipative way. The proposed method has the potential to improve transport operations with electric commercial vehicles capitalizing on their environmental benefits

Reinforcement Learning

Approximate Dynamic Programming

Energy Consumption

Electric Vehicles

Vehicle Routing

Green Logistics

Author

Rafael Basso

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Systems and control

Balázs Adam Kulcsár

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Systems and control

Ivan Sanchez-Diaz

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Service Management and Logistics

Xiaobo Qu

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review

1366-5545 (ISSN)

Vol. 157 157 102496

EL FORT - El Flottor Optimering i Real-Tid

VINNOVA (2014-01381), 2014-07-01 -- 2017-06-30.

IRIS: Inverse Reinforcement-Learning and Intelligent Swarm Algorithms for Resilient Transportation Networks

Chalmers, 2020-01-01 -- 2021-12-31.

EL FORT - Optimering av elfordonsflotta i Real-Tid - (Fas 2)

VINNOVA (2017-05512), 2018-03-01 -- 2019-12-31.

Areas of Advance

Transport

Subject Categories

Transport Systems and Logistics

Vehicle Engineering

Energy Systems

Control Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.tre.2021.102496

More information

Latest update

4/5/2022 6