# i-Rebalance: Personalized Vehicle Repositioning for Supply Demand Balance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.04429 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04429/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Efficient Ridesharing Order Dispatching with Mean Field Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11454/) (2019)
- [Reinforcement Learning for Ridesharing: An Extended Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01099/) (2021)
- [MOVI: A Model-Free Approach to Dynamic Fleet Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04758/) (2018)
- [CoRide: Joint Order Dispatching and Fleet Management for Multi-Scale Ride-Hailing Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11353/) (2019)
- [Real-world Ride-hailing Vehicle Repositioning using Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04555/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [GARLIC: GPT-Augmented Reinforcement Learning with Intelligent Control for Vehicle Dispatching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10286/) (2024)
- [Atomic Proximal Policy Optimization for Electric Robo-Taxi Dispatch and Charger Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13392/) (2025)
- [Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Mobility Resource Allocation with Hierarchical Adaptive Grouping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20377/) (2025)
- [MobiWave: Dispatch-Oriented Graph Wavelets and Drift-Guided Selective Optimization for Autonomous Fleet Rebalancing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24365/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ride-hailing platforms have been facing the challenge of balancing demand and supply. Existing vehicle reposition techniques often treat drivers as homogeneous agents and relocate them deterministically, assuming compliance with the reposition. In this paper, we consider a more realistic and driver-centric scenario where drivers have unique cruising preferences and can decide whether to take the recommendation or not on their own. We propose i-Rebalance, a personalized vehicle reposition technique with deep reinforcement learning (DRL). i-Rebalance estimates drivers' decisions on accepting reposition recommendations through an on-field user study involving 99 real drivers. To optimize supply-demand balance and enhance preference satisfaction simultaneously, i-Rebalance has a sequential reposition strategy with dual DRL agents: Grid Agent to determine the reposition order of idle vehicles, and Vehicle Agent to provide personalized recommendations to each vehicle in the pre-defined order. This sequential learning strategy facilitates more effective policy training within a smaller action space compared to traditional joint-action methods. Evaluation of real-world trajectory data shows that i-Rebalance improves driver acceptance rate by 38.07% and total driver income by 9.97%.