Cooperative Highway Traffic

As cooperative systems (connected vehicles) enable communication and the exchange of information between vehicles and infrastructure, the communication capabilities are expected to lead to better active traffic management on urban motorways. Technological constraints must be the basis for any management strategy. If communication has been analytically proved to help stabilize traffic flow at a microscopic level, then realistic communication strategies should be evaluated by taking into consideration multiple perturbations such as sensor faults and driver cooperation. In this study, a three-layer multiagent framework was used to model and control the homogenization of traffic flow. The physical layer coordinated vehicle dynamics on the basis of a cooperative car-following model. This layer included cooperation derived from the communication and trust layers that, respectively, managed information and its reliability. Simulation results highlight the positive impacts of communication and control on the stability of traffic flow.