CPS: Synergy: Cyber Physical Regional Freight Transportation

In this project we consider the development of a Cyber Physical Freight Transportation System for load balancing in multimodal transportation networks. We use on line simulation models to capture the nonlinear and complex dynamical characteristics of the transportation networks. The simulation models generate the states of the network that are used to solve an optimization problem which finds the optimum routes. These routes are then updated by a load balancing controller  which uses the simulation models to update the states of the network and solve again the optimization problem for updated routes. This iterative process continues till certain stopping criteria are met and the network is more balanced than before. The implementation of the approach to freight routing requires the use of a central coordinator who receives requests from shippers in terms of origin to destination demand vectors and uses the load balancing approach to generate recommended routes for each shipper by minimizing an overall system cost function. Since system optimality does not imply user optimality we formulated the problem as a game theoretic problem and analyze mechanisms of incentives that guarantee that the cost to individual shippers due to participation will not exceed the cost of non participation. These incentives are designed to lead to zero average budget and are based on paying users that lose and accept payments from users that benefit.