Evaluation and Selection of Routes for Automated Road Freight Vehicles : Using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate andselect potential routes for automated driving systems (ADS) in the road freight industry when considering the operational

Abstract: Researchers anticipate the road freight industry to be among the first ones to integrate automated driving systems (ADS) in their operations. Matching the driving capabilities with suitable routes is pivotal for deploying ADS at early stages. This thesis examines the use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate routes in the road freight industry when considering the operational design domain (ODD) and three strategic criteria: Cost, Utilization, and Risk. The research was conducted based on a case study with Company A, a leading software company that sells sustainable freight as a service. The findings indicate that although existing ODD frameworks are applicable to the road freight industry, not all route attributes are of equal importance. For instance, attributes related to connectivity and the vehicle’s size and weight are particularly important. For the utilization of the vehicle, the reliance on remote operators was identified as a major bottleneck. One identified risk for the ADS concerns the changeability of the operating environment. The AHP method further required three adaptations to facilitate the comprehensive route evaluation, namely attribute grouping, complexity indices, and weight factorization. The benefits of the AHP method are its ease of use and systematical structure, its adaptability and flexibility, and its scalability. While the first two benefits are in line with previous studies, the third benefit arises from the adaptations proposed in this thesis. As the research field of automated driving remains highly dynamic, all decision elements and their corresponding weights need to be updated continuously in order to maintain the validity of the model.