Distributed coordinated in-vehicle online routing using mixed-strategy congestion game

• Coordinated online in-vehicle routing mechanism.
• Mixed-strategy routing game incorporating Multinomial Logit discrete choice model.
• Existence of an equilibrium joint route decision.
• Convergence of a simultaneously updating distributed algorithm.
• Numerical experiments.

This study proposes a coordinated online in-vehicle routing mechanism for smart vehicles with real-time information exchange and portable computation capabilities. The proposed coordinated routing mechanism incorporates a discrete choice model to account for drivers’ behavior, and is implemented by a simultaneously-updating distributed algorithm. This study shows the existence of an equilibrium coordinated routing decision for the mixed-strategy routing game and the convergence of the distributed algorithm to the equilibrium routing decision, assuming individual smart vehicles are selfish players seeking to minimize their own travel time. Numerical experiments conducted based on Sioux Falls city network indicate that the proposed distributed algorithm converges quickly under different smart vehicle penetrations, thus it possesses a great potential for online applications. Moreover, the proposed coordinated routing mechanism outperforms traditional independent selfish-routing mechanism; it reduces travel time for both overall system and individual vehicles, which represents the core idea of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).