Abstract
Aiming at operating effectively future traffic systems, we propose here a novel methodology for integrated lane-changing and ramp metering control that exploits the presence of connected vehicles. In particular, we assume that a percentage of vehicles can receive and implement specific control tasks (e.g., lane-changing commands), while ramp metering is available via an infrastructure-based system or enabled by connected vehicles. The proposed approach is designed to robustly maximise the throughput at motorway bottlenecks employing a feedback controller, formulated as a Linear Quadratic Integral regulator, which is based on a simplified linear time invariant traffic flow model. We also present an extremum seeking algorithm to compute the optimal set-points used in the feedback controller, employing only the measurement of a cost that is representative of the achieved traffic conditions. The method is evaluated via simulation experiments, performed on a first-order, multi-lane, macroscopic traffic flow model, also featuring the capacity drop phenomenon, which allows to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed methodology and to highlight the improvement in terms of the generated congestion.
Highlights
I N THE last decades, a significant and increasing interdisciplinary effort by the automotive industry, as well as by numerous research institutions around the world, has been devoted to planning, developing, testing, and deploying new technologies that are expected to revolutionise the features and capabilities of individual vehicles in the future [1]
Among the wide range of available systems, few may have a direct impact on traffic flow, while the majority of them aims at primarily improving safety or driver’s convenience [2]
We focus here on the integration of a promising new feature that can be exploited for traffic management in the presence of connected and automated vehicles, namely, lane-changing control, together with a conventional well-established traffic control measure, namely, ramp metering [3]
Summary
I N THE last decades, a significant and increasing interdisciplinary effort by the automotive industry, as well as by numerous research institutions around the world, has been devoted to planning, developing, testing, and deploying new technologies that are expected to revolutionise the features and capabilities of individual vehicles in the future [1]. Some of the mentioned empirical investigations indicate that in conventional traffic, capacity flow is not reached simultaneously at all lanes, a feature that reduces the potentially achievable cross-lane capacity It is, envisioned that if a sufficient percentage of vehicles have vehicle-to-infrastructure communication capabilities and appropriate lane-changing automatic controllers or advisory systems, the overall throughput at the bottleneck location may be improved by the execution of specific lane-changing commands decided by a central decision maker. If lane-changing control capabilities are implemented in conjunction with more traditional traffic management strategies, such as ramp metering, in an integrated fashion, the resulting effectiveness, in terms of traffic performance, would be further increased, while allowing for rigorous investigations on the generalisability and robustness of the methodology for different networks topologies and under different disturbances.
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