Increasing traffic capacity of mixed traffic at signalized traffic intersections using delayed self reinforcement

Abstract

The traffic capacity of signalized intersections can be increased using vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication by broadcasting traffic control signals to connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs). However, the potential improvement in traffic capacity with only CAVs can be substantially reduced under mixed traffic environments that include autonomous vehicles (AVs) without V2I communication. The main contribution of this work is to increase the traffic capacity (close to that achieved by CAVs with V2I communication) when there is a substantial number of AVs without V2I communication — by using a delayed-self-reinforcement (DSR) approach for vehicle spacing control with already available history of the AVs own control inputs and sensed information. Moreover, analytical estimates are established to predict the improvements in traffic capacity achieved for AVs with the DSR approach compared to the case without the DSR approach. Simulation results match the analytical predictions and show that AVs using the DSR approach (without V2I communication) are able to recover 88% of intersection capacity achieved with CAVs (with V2I communication) and result in 2.7 times the intersection capacity achieved by AVs without DSR on one way traffic. Moreover, similar improvements with DSR are shown for a real-world intersection using the Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO) platform. AVs with DSR approach are able to recover 96% of intersection capacity achieved with CAVs (with V2I communication) and result in 1.4 times the intersection capacity achieved by AVs without DSR. Improvements using DSR are also seen with mixed traffic that includes human-driven vehicles (HDVs).