Traffic Models for Self-driving Connected Cars

Traffic Models for Self-driving Connected Cars

Self-driving and connected vehicles, communicating with one another (V2 V technology) and with the road infrastructure (V2I technology), are a subject of extensive research nowadays and are expected to revolutionize the automotive industry in the near future. The major goal of our work is to design a microscopic traffic simulation model for such vehicles, including a robust protocol for exchanging information. The question arises as to whether such communication system may efficiently improve travel quality while reducing the risk of collisions. For the purpose of our research we created and developed a simulation software. Our tool visualizes traffic flow for custom but simplified road maps. The transport infrastructure includes multiple junctions, optionally equipped with traffic lights, and roads with varying number of travel lanes. Each vehicle is assigned a fixed route leading to a randomly chosen destination point. Any decisions made by autonomous cars (regarding acceleration or turning maneuvers) are preceded by communication stages (retrieving necessary data, negotiations). In the paper we present fundamental concepts, assumptions and design of our model and simulation software, we also discuss potential issues relevant to our approach. As for the future work, we plan to implement our model in a large-scale agent-based traffic simulation software, Traffic Simulation Framework, so that further examination will be carried out for realistic road networks taken from the OpenStreetMap project. We also plan to apply machine learning techniques, so that self-driving vehicles, as well as traffic light controllers, will be able to learn how to develop the best strategy and by this way improve traffic safety and efficiency in atypical cases.

Read more : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146516302423