The MACB Problem: Definitions, Variants, and a PDDL+ Approach

: Modular Autonomous Customised Bus Systems (MACB) promise to significantly enhance public transport attractiveness and accessibility, leading to improved quality of life and reduced emissions. Compared to traditional bus systems, MACB provides a problem that poses a new set of challenges, ranging from the allocation of vehicles to the optimisation of routes and recharges. The MACB problem is attracting increasing interest within the transport research community, but it presents characteristics and dimensions that lend themselves well to approaches based on planning and combinatorial search. In this paper, with the aim of bridging the gap between different research communities, we provide a crisp definition of the MACB problem and present a planning-based approach to solve a specific variant of the problem, together with a set of benchmarks to foster research on this topic.