Web Service-based tour-and-charging Scheduler Framework for Rent-a-car Systems Employing Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a flexible service framework for tour-and-charging schedulers based on web services, aiming at providing an energy-efficient tour schedule services to electric vehicles. For a rent-a-car system which is a promising business model capable of dealing with high cost of electric vehicles, this service decides the visiting order for renters who want to visit multiple tour spots and need to have their vehicles charged during their trips. Mobile applications, running on Android operating systems, take the user selection via Google Map interface and submit to the scheduler by means of well-known Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The tour scheduler implements not only a genetic algorithm to decide the visiting order for the given spot set but also a point-to-point A* algorithm to find an appropriate route between two consecutive spots on a graph-style road network, which necessarily contains the locations of charging facilities. Every parameter and result is encapsulated by KSOAP to comply with .NET platform. This service can enriches the smart transportation service, especially in long-term and short term rental and sharing businesses.