Autonomous robotic boats equipped with chargers or swappable batteries can serve as Mobile Energy Disseminators (MED) and proactively maintain the State-of-Charge of electric vessels. However, previous methods are either incapable of keeping the vessels continuously driving without recharge downtime, or not directly applicable for the scheduling of chargers on city-scale transportation networks. We proposeRoboCharger: aRoboticChargerboat scheduling system that adaptively determines the number of serving MEDs, and the optimal routes of the MEDs according to vessel traffic. We studied a metropolitan-scale vessel mobility dataset provided by MarineTraffic and analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of vessel movements in Amsterdam's canals. Based on the analysis insights, we developed a MinHash and spatial-temporal similarity comparison based method for vessel traffic estimation, a Chinese Postman Problem based method for determining the cruising routes of the MEDs, and formulated and solved a multi-objective optimization problem to determine the number of serving MEDs, the driving route of each MED and maintain the SoC of the vessels above zero. Our trace-driven experiments demonstrate that compared with previous methods,RoboChargerincreases the average SoC of vessels over all time slots throughout a day by almost 42%, and the number of charges of vessels by almost 53%.

With the advancement of dynamic wireless charging for Electric Vehicles (EVs), Mobile Energy Disseminator (MED), which can charge an EV in motion, becomes available. However, existing wireless charging scheduling methods for wireless sensors, which are the most related works to MED deployment, are not directly applicable for city-scale EV-to-EV dynamic wireless charging. We presentMobiCharger:aMobile wirelessChargerguidance system that determines the number of serving MEDs, and their optimal routes. We studied a metropolitan-scale vehicle mobility dataset, and found: most vehicles have routines, and the number of driving EVs changes over time, which means MED deployment should adaptively change as well. We combine EVs' current trajectories and routines to estimate EV density and the cruising graph for MED coverage. Then, we develop an offline MED deployment method that utilizes multi-objective optimization to determine the number of serving MEDs and the driving route of each MED, and an online method that utilizes Reinforcement Learning to adjust the MED deployment when the real-time vehicle traffic changes. Our trace-driven experiments show that compared with previous methods,MobiChargerincreases the medium State-of-Charge of all EVs by 50% during all time slots, and the number of charges of EVs by almost 100%.

Previous methods for passenger demand inference are unable to capture the effect of all possible random factors (e.g., accident and weather), hence resulting in insufficient accuracy. Moreover, due to the lack of charging optimization, existing taxicab dispatching methods cannot be applied to electric taxicabs directly. We propose CD-Guide, which provides Charging and Dispatching Guide for electric taxicabs based on customized selection and training of historical passenger demand data, multiobjective optimization, and reinforcement learning (RL). By analyzing a large-scale electric taxicab data set, we found that: 1) the histogram of passengers’ origin buildings is effective in illustrating the suitability of historical data for learning; 2) passenger demands in different regions vary a lot due to various random factors; and 3) charging time must be considered in dispatching electric taxicabs. We first develop a passenger demand inference model based on customized selection and training of suitable historical passenger demand data. Then, we develop two taxicab guidance methods that utilize multiobjective optimization and RL, respectively, to maximize the taxicab’s likelihood of finding passengers, maximally prevent the taxicab from missing passengers due to charging, and, meanwhile, maintain the continuous service of the taxicab. Extensive experiments on real-world data sets demonstrate that compared with the state of the art, CD-Guide increases the total number of served passengers by 100%, and the minimum State-of-Charge of all taxicabs by 75% during all time slots.

In metropolitan areas with heavy transit demands, electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to be continuously driving without recharging downtime. Wireless power transfer (WPT) provides a promising solution for in-motion EV charging. Nevertheless, previous works are not directly applicable for the deployment of in-motion wireless chargers due to their different charging characteristics. The challenge of deploying in-motion wireless chargers to support the continuous driving of EVs in a metropolitan road network with the minimum cost remains unsolved. We proposeCatChargerto tackle this challenge. By analyzing a metropolitan-scale data set, we found that traffic attributes like vehicle passing speed, daily visit frequency at intersections (i.e., landmarks), and their variances are diverse, and these attributes are critical to in-motion wireless charging performance. Driven by these observations, we first group landmarks with similar attribute values using the entropy minimization clustering method, and select candidate landmarks from the groups with suitable attribute values. Then, we use the kernel density estimator (KDE) to deduce the expected vehicle residual energy at each candidate landmark and consider EV drivers’ routing choice behavior in charger deployment. Finally, we determine the deployment locations by formulating and solving a multiobjective optimization problem, which maximizes vehicle traffic flow at charger deployment positions while guaranteeing the continuous driving of EVs at each landmark. Trace-driven experiments demonstrate thatCatChargerincreases the ratio of driving EVs at the end of a day by 12.5% under the same deployment cost.