Framework for Incorporating Artificial Somatic Markers in the Decision-Making of Autonomous Agents

Bio-inspired artificial somatic index for reflecting the travel experience of passenger agents under a flexible transportation scenario

This work analyzes the implementation of an artificial mechanism inspired by a biological somatic marker that ables a passenger agent to both, react to changes in the service, as well as keep said reactions as a memory for future decisions. An artificial mental model was designed, and the passenger agent was implemented as an autonomous decision-making system, where both, the choice of the transport operator and the evaluation of the received service were fully delegated to the system. The evaluation of the service experience is not only based on rational aspects (such as the cost of the trip) but also on subjective aspects related to the satisfaction level derived from the passenger's experience. The experimental scenario considered 10,000 trip requests simulated within an artificial map that emulates characteristics that are usually present in a city, such as vehicular congestion, the unsafety of certain streets, or the benefits of an area with tourist interest. The results show that the option to travel under a transport operator with a touristic profile is a trend. Unlike current cases in the industry, this research work explores the scenario where the passenger can have as a client a trip profile with memory, differentiated from other clients, and can receive more than one trip proposal for the same trip request, according to the different conditions that the passenger is looking for.