Calendar

Abstract: Uber is one of several recent companies adopting a business model that lies in stark contrast with the standard approach used by taxi services. Underlying Uber's business model is a new architecture--based on a market mechanism--which governs how commuters, drivers, and the company interact with each other. In this talk, we develop a new general model for on-demand transport networks with self-interested passengers and drivers. With this model, we introduce market mechanisms to allocate and price journeys, as well as the market formation subproblem. By analysis and simulation, we characterize the performance of the mechanisms and discuss insights using data obtained from a real on-demand transport provider.

Malcolm Egan received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, in 2009 and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, in 2014. In the years 2014-2016, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Computer Science, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic and in the Laboratoire de Mathématiques, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France. He is now a Postdoctoral Researcher in CITI Lab, INSA-Lyon, INRIA, Université de Lyon. His research interests include optimization theory, mechanism design, information theory and statistical signal processing, as well as their applications.