Simulation-Based Connected and Automated Vehicle Models on Highway Sections: A Literature Review

Abstract

This study provides a literature review of the simulation-based connected and automated intelligent-vehicle studies. Media and car-manufacturing companies predict that connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) would be available in the near future. However, society and transportation systems might not be completely ready for their implementation in various aspects, e.g., public acceptance, technology, infrastructure, and/or policy. Since the empirical field data for CAVs are not available at present, many researchers develop micro or macro simulation models to evaluate the CAV impacts. This study classifies the most commonly used intelligent-vehicle types into four categories (i.e., adaptive cruise control, ACC; cooperative adaptive cruise control, CACC; automated vehicle, AV; CAV) and summarizes the intelligent-vehicle car-following models (i.e., Intelligent Driver Model, IDM; MICroscopic Model for Simulation of Intelligent Cruise Control, MIXIC). The review results offer new insights for future intelligent-vehicle analyses: (i) the increase in the market-penetration rate of intelligent vehicles has a significant impact on traffic flow conditions; (ii) without vehicle connections, such as the ACC vehicles, the roadway-capacity increase would be marginal; (iii) none of the parameters in the AV or CAV models is calibrated by the actual field data; (iv) both longitudinal and lateral movements of intelligent vehicles can reduce energy consumption and environmental costs compared to human-driven vehicles; (v) research gap exists in studying the car-following models for newly developed intelligent vehicles; and (vi) the estimated impacts are not converted into a unified metric (i.e., welfare economic impact on users or society) which is essential to evaluate intelligent vehicles from an overall societal perspective.