Systems and methods for managing a vehicle sharing facility

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-readable code, which, when executed by a computing apparatus, causes the computing apparatus to perform a method of sharing autonomous vehicles from a fleet of available autonomous vehicles, the method comprising:

• (a) detecting a plurality of inputs corresponding to vehicle booking requests from customers for the autonomous vehicles, wherein each request from a customer includes
• data identifying a drop-off location and a pick-up location that is distinct from the pick-up location of other customers,
• a vehicle type preference wherein vehicle types include a VIP car and a standard car, and
• a vehicle capacity;
• (b) accessing a data structure containing stored data relating to user authorisations for using a vehicle-sharing facility to verify whether each of the vehicle booking requests relates to a customer authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility;
• and
• for those vehicle booking requests relating to customers identified as being authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility:
• (c) automatically selecting customers to share an autonomous vehicle and calculating a suggested route for the autonomous vehicle using the pick-up location and drop-off locations of the customers and one or more stored vehicle-share criteria, the automatically selecting customers to share the autonomous vehicle and calculating the suggested route including
• selecting candidate combinations of customers to share a vehicle according to one or more vehicle share criteria,
• identifying potential routes for each candidate combination of customers,
• calculating a score for each route of the potential routes for each candidate combination of customers, and
• selecting the potential route determined to have a best score, the selected potential route being associated with a particular candidate combination of customers;
• calculating scores for the autonomous vehicles in the fleet based on the booking requests;
• selecting an autonomous vehicle from the fleet based on the calculated scores;
• and
• (d) controlling the selected autonomous vehicle to follow the selected route.

Apparatus having at least one processor and at least one memory having computer-readable code stored thereon which when executed controls the at least one processor to share autonomous vehicles from a fleet of available autonomous vehicles by:

• (a) detecting a plurality of inputs corresponding to vehicle booking requests from customers for the autonomous vehicles, wherein each request from a customer includes
• data identifying a drop-off location and a pick-up location that is distinct from the pick-up location of other customers,
• a vehicle type preference wherein vehicle types include a VIP car and a standard car, and
• a vehicle capacity;
• (b) accessing a data structure containing stored data relating to user authorisations for using a vehicle-sharing facility to verify whether each of the customers is authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility;
• and
• for those vehicle booking requests relating to customers identified as being authorised to use the vehicle-sharing facility:
• (c) automatically selecting customers to share an autonomous vehicle and calculating a suggested route for the autonomous vehicle using the pick-up location and drop-off locations of the customers and one or more stored vehicle-share criteria, the automatically selecting customers to share the autonomous vehicle and calculating the suggested route including
• selecting candidate combinations of customers to share a vehicle according to one or more vehicle share criteria,
• identifying potential routes for each candidate combination of customers,
• calculating a score for each route of the potential routes for each candidate combination of customers, and
• selecting the potential route determined to have a best score, the selected potential route being associated with a particular candidate combination of customers;
• calculating scores for the autonomous vehicles in the fleet based on the booking requests;
• selecting an autonomous vehicle from the fleet based on the calculated scores;
• and
• (d) controlling the selected autonomous vehicle to follow the selected route.