Automated Vehicles (AV) promise many benefits for future mobility. One of them is a reduction of the required total vehicle fleet size, especially if AVs are used predominantly as shared vehicles. This paper presents research on this potential reduction for the greater Zurich region, Switzerland. Fleets of shared AVs, serving a predefined demand, are simulated with a simulation framework introduced in the paper. Different scenarios are created, combining different levels of demand for AVs with different levels of supply (i.e. AV fleet size). An important contribution of this study is the use of a spatially and temporally highly detailed travel demand, going beyond the simplifications of previous studies on the topic. This provides a more solid basis to the ongoing discussion on the future fleet size. It is found that, for a given fleet performance target (here 95% of all transport requests are served within 5 minutes), the relationship between served demand and required fleet size is non-linear and the ratio increases as demand increases. There is a scale effect, which has the important implication that for different levels of demand the fleet is used more or less efficiently. This paper also finds that, if waiting times of up to 10 minutes are accepted, a reduction of up to 90% of the total vehicle fleet can be possible even without active fleet management like vehicle redistribution. Such effects require, however, that a large enough share of the car demand can be served by AVs.

This study provides a large-scale micro-simulation of transportation patterns in a metropolitan area when relying on a system of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs). The six-county region of Austin, Texas is used for its land development patterns, demographics, networks, and trip tables. The agent-based MATSim toolkit allows modelers to track individual travelers and individual vehicles, with great temporal and spatial detail. MATSim's algorithms help improve individual travel plans (by changing tour and trip start times, destinations, modes, and routes). Here, the SAV mode requests were simulated through a stochastic process for four possible fare levels:

Abstract-More and more highly automated vehicles arrive in the consumer market and fully autonomous vehicles are predicted to become available in the next few years. Autonomous vehicles promise to fundamentally change mobility -for users as for planners. Transport models and simulations are required to prepare for these changes. This paper suggests agent-based transport models as a suited mean to model future transport scenarios including autonomous vehicles. The multiagent transport model MATSim is presented in detail and some possible research questions on autonomous vehicles -the future car fleet size, future demand patterns, and the interaction between public transport and autonomous vehicles -are introduced. Reason is given, why agent-based models are particularly suited to investigate these questions.

In research of human-robot interactions, human likeness (HL) of robots is frequently used as an individual, vague parameter to describe how a robot is perceived by a human. However, such a simplification of HL is often not sufficient given the complexity and multidimensionality of human-robot interaction. Therefore, HL must be seen as a variable influenced by a network of parameter fields. The first goal of this paper is to introduce such a network which systematically characterizes all relevant aspects of HL. The network is subdivided into ten parameter fields, five describing static aspects of appearance and five describing dynamic aspects of behavior. The second goal of this paper is to propose a methodology to quantify the impact of single or multiple parameters out of these fields on perceived HL. Prior to quantification, the minimal perceivable difference, i.e. the threshold of perception, is determined for the parameters of interest in a first experiment. Thereafter, these parameters are modified in whole-number multiple of the threshold of perception to investigate their influence on perceived HL in First two authors contributed equally to this work.

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