Forecasting Taxis Demand in Real Time with AI

February 2017

You have been there …

Where are the taxis?

Where are the customers?

1

Find a system to match demand and supply efficiently

2

Forecast taxi demand

Taxis drive to areas based on demand forecast

Customers get rides quickly

What’s the solution?

3

Other data

Weather data

Taxi data (location, status, etc.)

Population statistics (from mobile network)

Taxi demand forecast

Real-time forecasting system

Preprocessing

Design, engineer and model incidents likely to affect taxi demand

Model incidents likely to affect taxi demand through learning

500m

500m

・・・

Real-time forecasting system 4

Forecasting accuracy

Accuracy =

Accurate/semi-accurate forecasts

All forecasts

― DOCOMO is currently pursuing higher accuracy ―

0%

100%

低需要エリア 中需要エリア 高需要エリア

Accurate

Semi-accurate

(Residential areas, etc.)

Low-demand areas

Medium-demand areas

High-demand areas

(Stations, downtown, etc.)

5

Determining accuracy

Error range (%) = Actuals

Forecast – Actual

Actual within -50%

of forecast

Actual within ±20%

of forecast

Accurate Semi- accurate

-50% -20%

Inaccurate Inaccurate Semi- accurate

+50% +20%

Actual within +50%

of forecast

(fewer riders than forecasted) (more riders than forecasted)

6

Excluded factors 7

The system ignores areas without pedestrians or taxis late at night (residential areas, etc.).

Overview of field trial 8

Started

June 2016

Pre-survey

Built

forecasting

model

Field trial Dec. 2016 to March 2017

When ： From June 2016 to March 2017

Where ： Tokyo

Who ： DOCOMO, Tokyo Musen Cooperative Association, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Ten

How ： Data accumulated from 4425 taxis, 12 of which are installed with

forecasting system

Impact on sales of taxi

Nov. 2016 Dec. 2016

¥4,500/day

¥6,723/day

Before Trial

After Trial

Up 49% With system Deference

Without system Deference

Difference of sales between “before trial” and “after trial”.

9

Proven results

Passenger Taxi drivers

Taxi company

Useful for training new taxi drivers (Taxi logistics manager in his 40s)

- Compensates for my experience and knowledge (Driver in his 50s)

- Found passengers in unfamiliar places, even when returning from long rides (Driver in his 20s)

Conveniently found taxi as soon as I started looking (Passenger in her 20s)

User comments 10

11