Główne pojęcia
Altruistic routing policies that consider the impact on aggregate congestion can improve total latency in series-parallel nonatomic congestion games, provided the network is symmetric and Braess-resistant.
Streszczenie
The paper investigates the impact of altruistic routing policies on total congestion in series-parallel nonatomic congestion games. It provides a thorough analysis of the necessary conditions for altruistic agents to be guaranteed to improve total congestion.
Key highlights:
- The paper shows that in a game with a heterogeneous population of altruistic and selfish agents, if the network is symmetric (all agents have access to all paths) and Braess-resistant, then an increase in the fraction of altruistic agents is guaranteed to improve the total latency of the network, provided the network is series-parallel.
- It is demonstrated that the experienced path cost functions for agents of either type is monotone as a function of their sub-population size. Specifically, if one sub-population increases, and the other sub-population decreases by the same amount, the path cost increases for agents of the increasing sub-population, and decreases for agents of the decreasing sub-population.
- The paper shows that path flows are monotone with respect to marginal changes in the fraction of populations. This implies that even small decreases in altruistic population size (and subsequent increases in selfish population) can increase path flows for other selfish agents.
The results provide a comprehensive characterization of when altruistic routing policies are guaranteed to improve total congestion, which has significant implications for the design of transportation networks and autonomous vehicle routing policies.