Optimal Truck Platoon Formation at Hubs

Abstract

The project is a simulation focused on the formation of truck platoon by scheduling the departure time according to their profit. Truck platoon brings benefits in environmental aspect and economic aspect. And nowadays, there are huge number of delivery trucks travelling in the world every day. Truck platoon is a rising transportation topic with the benefit brought. In this project, game theory is the foundation of solution. Using the best response and Nash equilibrium seeking algorithm to find out the best departure time which has the greatest profit to form a truck platoon. The result from the algorithm returns the best departure time for each included truck. Trucks with same best response time could then form a platoon and departure at the corresponding time. The efficiency of the algorithm could be seen when there is a large amount of sample or acceptable range of each truck is large. Moreover, beside the use of best response, another algorithm to find the departure time to form platoon has been implemented for providing an alternative method. It finds the departure time with profit above a certain amount, but not maximum profit in the best response algorithm. Allowing user to reach the result suit their need most.