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With the development of autonomous driving technology utilizing machine learning, AI, and sensors, research on autonomous driving control has become more active, and a large number of innovative studies are underway. In the near future, all autonomous vehicle fleets will be able to communicate with each other for sharing information and overall optimal traffic control will be achieved. One of the vehicle control systems that are based on the premise of such a fully automated society is the "signal-less intersection." There is an intersection traffic control method that achieves safe and rational route selection by using virtual walls (VWs), which are virtual obstacles, but there are issues in terms of total route length and reduction of computation time. To address the issues, we propose a method that (1) prunes unneeded paths and (2) arranges VWs in a stepwise manner. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by simulation, and the results showed that the total route length and execution time were reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The congestion caused by ramp overflow has an essential impact on the energy consumption of autonomous vehicles. It is urgent to solve the energy waste of ramp overflow on connected and autonomous vehicles and improve the energy utilization rate. Aiming at the traffic congestion caused by ramp overflow, this paper obtains the data of autonomous vehicles and traffic flow based on vehicle road cooperative perception, analyzes the impact mechanism of vehicle energy consumption, and summarizes the energy consumption modes of autonomous vehicles into three categories. Second, an energy consumption evaluation framework is proposed based on the CSANS strategy. This strategy can make up for the deficiency of constructing neighborhoods within European distance, find important influencing variables on connected and autonomous vehicles' energy consumption, and accurately capture the manifold characteristics of energy consumption data. Finally, flow control is carried out from the macro perspective of traffic engineering to optimize ramp overflow's impact on autonomous vehicles' energy consumption. Through multiple groups of experiments, it has been found that it can effectively reduce the energy consumption of autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting lane-changing behaviors (lane keeping, left lane change and right lane change) in real-time is essential for ensuring traffic safety, particularly in mixed-traffic environments with both autonomous and manual vehicles. This paper proposes a fused model that predicts vehicle lane-changing behaviors based on the road traffic environment and vehicle motion parameters. The model combines the ensemble learning XGBoost algorithm with the deep learning Bi-GRU neural network. The XGBoost algorithm first checks whether the present environment is safe for the lane change and then evaluates the likelihood that the target vehicle will make a lane change. Subsequently, the Bi-GRU neural network is used to accurately forecast the lane-changing behaviors of nearby vehicles using the feasibility of lane-changing and the vehicle's motion status as input features. The highD trajectory dataset was utilized for training and testing the model. The model achieved an accuracy of 98.82%, accurately predicting lane changes with an accuracy exceeding 87% within a 2-second timeframe. By comparing with other methods and conducting experimental validation, we have demonstrated the superiority of the proposed model, thus, the research achievement is of utmost significance for the practical application of autonomous driving technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To alleviate the lane-changing conflicts between weaving vehicles and enhance the traffic efficiency in the weaving section of urban expressway under the connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) environment, a cooperative lane-changing strategy for CAVs is proposed. The strategy consists of an upper layer of decision making, which determines the lane-changing sequences of weaving vehicles based on their lane-changing advantages quantified by a set of utility functions, and a lower layer of control, which generates detailed instructions of speed adjustments and lane-changing manoeuvres for weaving vehicles. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy under different traffic demand settings, a numerical simulation, including a base case and a control case, is conducted. Then, to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for the mixed traffic state and compare its performance with the existing CAV lane-changing method, benchmark and comparison tests with six different market penetration rates (MPRs) of CAVs are carried out under the congested demand setting. In addition, the delay improvement ratio, inverse time-to-collision, and ratio of large deceleration time are selected as performance indicators to investigate the effect of the proposed strategy on enhancing the operational efficiency, traffic safety, and passenger's comfort within the weaving section. According to the simulation results, the overall efficiency, safety and comfort in the weaving section under the CAV environment, are all improved, when the proposed strategy is applied to weaving vehicles. The proposed strategy is also superior to the existing CAV lane-changing method on maintaining traffic efficiency and safety. Therefore, the proposed cooperative lane-changing strategy, based on CAV technologies, shows good potential in solving the problem of lane-changing conflicts within the weaving section and facilitating the traffic management and traffic control of urban expressway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles are in the main focus for automotive companies and urban traffic engineers as well. As their penetration rate in traffic becomes more and more pronounced due to improvement in sensor technologies and the corresponding infrastructure, new methods for autonomous vehicle controls become a necessity. For instance, autonomous vehicles can improve the performance of urban traffic and prevent the formation of congestions with the usage of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication based control methods. One of the key area for improvement is centralized intersection control for autonomous vehicles, by which traveling times can be reduced and efficiency of traffic flow can be improved, while safety of passengers can be guaranteed through constraints built in the centralized design. The paper presents the analysis of a Model Predictive Control (MPC) method for the coordination of autonomous vehicles at intersections by comparing it with an offline constraint optimization considering time and energy optimal intervention of vehicles. The analysis has been evaluated in high-fidelity simulation environment CarSim, where the speed trajectories, traveling times and energy consumptions have been compared for the different methods. The simulations show that the proposed time-optimal MPC intersection control method results in similar traveling times of that given by the time-optimal offline constraint optimization, while the energy optimal optimization re-quires significantly more time for the autonomous vehicle to achieve. Due to the possibility of a congestion forming in the latter case, the proposed centralized MPC method is more applicable in real traffic scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence is gaining tremendous attractiveness and showing great success in solving various problems, such as simplifying optimal control derivation. This work focuses on the application of Neuroevolution to the control of Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) cohorts operating at uncontrolled intersections. The proposed method implementation's simplicity, thanks to the inclusion of heuristics and effective real-time performance are demonstrated. The resulting architecture achieves nearly ideal operating conditions in keeping the average speeds close to the speed limit. It achieves twice as high mean speed throughput as a controlled intersection, hence enabling lower travel time and mitigating energy inefficiencies from stop-and-go vehicle dynamics. Low deviation from the road speed limit is hence continuously sustained for cohorts of at most 50 m long. This limitation can be mitigated with additional lanes that the cohorts can split into. The concept also allows the testing and implementation of fast-turning lanes by simply replicating and reconnecting the control architecture at each new road crossing, enabling high scalability for complex road network analysis. The controller is also successfully validated within a high-fidelity vehicle dynamic environment, showing its potential for driverless vehicle control in addition to offering a new traffic control simulation model for future autonomous operation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the traffic operation efficiency at signalized intersections, a model for coupled control of traffic signals and connected autonomous vehicles at isolated signalized intersections is proposed. This model estimates the time that CAVs reach stop lines with real-time information about the speed and position of CAVs. The arrival time is leveraged to optimize traffic signal timing by rolling horizon, with the maximization of phase saturation as the optimization objective. Based on the optimized traffic signal timing, the speed profile of CAVs is optimized by a linear integer programming, with the maximization of speed at the moment of reaching the stop line as the optimization objective. Through the coupled control of travel speed and the traffic signal, CAVs can pass through the intersection safely, efficiently, and smoothly. NetLogo, a multiagent microscopic simulator, is developed to test this strategy, and an intersection in Weihai is taken for verification and analysis lastly. The simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the fixed traffic signal timing control and the model optimizing only speed profile of CAVs, the proposed model can reduce the average number of stops by 47.0% and the queuing time by 41.3%. In addition, the optimization is better during off-peak hours, about 10% higher than the peak hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usage of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the field of transportation appears to have immense potential. Intelligent vehicle systems can exchange seamless information to assist cars to ensure better traffic control and road safety. The dynamic topology of this network, connecting a large number of vehicles, makes it vulnerable to several threats like authentication, data integrity, confidentiality, etc. These threats jeopardize the safety of vehicles, riders, and the entire system. Researchers are developing several approaches to combat security threats in connected and autonomous vehicles. Artificial Intelligence is being used by both scientists and hackers for protecting and attacking the networks, respectively. Nevertheless, wirelessly coupled cars on the network are in constant peril. This motivated us to develop an intrusion detection model that can be run in low-end devices with low processing and memory capacity and can prevent security threats and protect the connected vehicle network. This research paper presents an Attention-enabled Hierarchical Deep Neural Network (AHDNN) as a solution to detect intrusion and ensure autonomous vehicles' security both at the nodes and at the network level. The proposed AHDNN framework has a very low false negative rate of 0.012 ensuring a very low rate of missing an intrusion in normal communication. This enables enhanced security in vehicular networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As technology continues to develop, computer vision (CV) applications are becoming increasingly widespread in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) context. These applications are developed to improve the efficiency of transportation systems, increase their level of intelligence, and enhance traffic safety. Advances in CV play an important role in solving problems in the fields of traffic monitoring and control, incident detection and management, road usage pricing, and road condition monitoring, among many others, by providing more effective methods. This survey examines CV applications in the literature, the machine learning and deep learning methods used in ITS applications, the applicability of computer vision applications in ITS contexts, the advantages these technologies offer and the difficulties they present, and future research areas and trends, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness, efficiency, and safety level of ITS. The present review, which brings together research from various sources, aims to show how computer vision techniques can help transportation systems to become smarter by presenting a holistic picture of the literature on different CV applications in the ITS context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing signalized intersection control methods allocate intersection resources to each phase from the time dimension based on traffic conflict. Solving the traffic control issues caused by the unbalanced traffic demands at intersections is always a challenge. Recently developed connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies render it possible to collect detailed real‐time traffic information from vehicles for the optimal control and management of time‐space resources at signalized intersections. In this paper, we propose a mixed integer quadratic programming to jointly optimize signal timings and variable guide lane settings for a typical four‐arm intersection in the CAV environment. From the time dimension, restrictions of the conventional concept of the signal cycle are overcome. Phase sequences, green start, and duration are freely assigned for each CAV platoon based on the movement‐based signal timing. From the space dimension, lane resources can be reasonably allocated in consideration of the dynamic traffic demand distribution. In this study, a demand‐response control is realized for the signalized intersection through time‐space resources cooperated optimization. Furthermore, vehicle trajectory control is integrated into the collaborative control framework to reduce or eliminate wasted green time. At last, we propose the dynamic control process using the collaborative control framework. Numerical simulation results show that the collaborative control method outperforms over fixed‐time and signal optimization control modes in terms of travel time with both under‐saturated and over‐saturated conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology to control the trajectory of cooperative connected automated vehicles (CAVs) at roundabouts with a mixed fleet of CAVs and human‐driven vehicles (HVs). We formulate an optimization program in a two‐dimensional space for this purpose. A model predictive control‐based solution technique is developed to optimize the trajectories of CAVs at discretized time steps based on the estimated driving behavior of HVs, while the actual behavior of HVs is controlled by a microscopic traffic simulator. At each time step, the location and speed of vehicles are collected, and a decomposition‐based methodology optimizes CAV trajectories for a few time steps ahead of the system time. The optimization methodology has convexification, alternating direction method of multipliers, and cutting plane decomposition components to tackle the complexities of the problem. We tested the solution technique in a case study roundabout with different traffic demand flow rates and CAV market penetration rates. The results showed that increasing the CAV market penetration rate from 20% to 100% reduced total travel times by 2.8% to 35.8%. The analyses indicate that the presence of cooperative CAVs in roundabouts can lead to considerable improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) is an effective method to reduce traffic congestion in modern urban areas. Many studies adopted various approaches to adjust traffic signal plans according to real-time traffic in response to demand fluctuations to improve urban network performance (e.g., minimise delay). Recently, learning-based methods such as reinforcement learning (RL) have achieved promising results in signal plan optimisation. However, adopting these self-learning techniques in future traffic environments in the presence of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) remains largely an open challenge. This study develops a real-time RL-based adaptive traffic signal control that optimises a signal plan to minimise the total queue length while allowing the CAVs to adjust their speed based on a fixed timing strategy to decrease total stop delays. The highlight of this work is combining a speed guidance system with a reinforcement learning-based traffic signal control. Two different performance measures are implemented to minimise total queue length and total stop delays. Results indicate that the proposed method outperforms a fixed timing plan (with optimal speed advisory in a CAV environment) and traditional actuated control, in terms of average stop delay of vehicle and queue length, particularly under saturated and oversaturated conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic control strategy plays a significant role in obtaining sustainable objectives because it not only improves traffic mobility but also enhances traffic management systems. It has been developed and applied by the research community in recent years and still offers various challenges and issues that may require the attention of researchers and engineers. Recent technological developments toward connected and automated vehicles are beneficial for improving traffic safety and achieving sustainable goals. There is a need to develop a survey on traffic control techniques, which could provide the recent developments in the traffic control strategy and could be useful in obtaining sustainable goals. This survey presents a comprehensive investigation of traffic control techniques by carefully reviewing existing methods from a new perspective and reviews various traffic control strategies that play an important role in achieving sustainable objectives. First, we present traffic control modeling techniques that provide a robust solution to obtain reasonable traffic and sustainable mobilities. These techniques could be helpful for enhancing the traffic flow in a freeway traffic environment. Then, we discuss traffic control strategies that could be helpful for researchers and practitioners to design a robust freeway traffic controller. Second, we present a comprehensive review of recent state-of-the-art methods on the vehicle design control strategy, which is followed by the traffic control design strategy. They aim to reduce traffic emissions and energy consumption by a vehicle. Finally, we present the open research challenges and outline some recommendations which could be beneficial for obtaining sustainable goals in traffic systems and help researchers understand various technical aspects in the deployment of traffic control systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the growing development of Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), and 5G communication networks have led to the advent of Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM) systems. AIMs present a new paradigm for CAV control in future cities, taking control of CAVs in scenarios where cooperation is necessary and allowing safe and efficient traffic flows, eliminating traffic signals. So far, the development of AIM algorithms has been based on basic control algorithms, without the ability to adapt or keep learning new situations. To solve this, in this paper we present a new advanced AIM approach based on end-to-end Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) and trained using Curriculum through Self-Play, called advanced Reinforced AIM (adv.RAIM). adv.RAIM enables the control of CAVs at intersections in a collaborative way, autonomously learning complex real-life traffic dynamics. In addition, adv.RAIM provides a new way to build smarter AIMs capable of proactively controlling CAVs in other highly complex scenarios. Results show remarkable improvements when compared to traffic light control techniques (reducing travel time by 59% or reducing time lost due to congestion by 95%), as well as outperforming other recently proposed AIMs (reducing waiting time by 56%), highlighting the advantages of using MADRL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are emerging with enormous potentials to solve many challenging road traffic problems. The AV emergence leads to a paradigm shift in the road traffic system, making the penetration of autonomous vehicles fast and its coexistence with human-driven cars inevitable. The migration from the traditional driving to the intelligent driving system with AV's gradual deployment needs supporting technology to address mixed traffic systems problems, mixed driving behaviour in a car-following model, variation in-vehicle type control means, the impact of a proportion of AV in traffic mixed traffic, and many more. The migration to fully AV will solve many traffic problems: desire to reclaim travel and commuting time, driving comfort, and accident reduction. Motivated by the above facts, this paper presents an extensive review of road intersection mixed traffic management techniques with a classification matrix of different traffic management strategies and technologies that could effectively describe a mix of human and autonomous vehicles. It explores the existing traffic control strategies and analyses their compatibility in a mixed traffic environment. Then review their drawback and build on it for the proposed robust mix of traffic management schemes. Though many traffic control strategies have been in existence, the analysis presented in this paper gives new insights to the readers on the applications of the cell reservation strategy in a mixed traffic environment. Though many traffic control strategies have been in existence, the Gipp's car-following model has shown to be very effective for optimal traffic flow performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging technologies in both wireless communication and automation driving that have enabled vehicles to communicate with infrastructure, and with each other, are collectively known as connected vehicle and automated vehicle (CAV) technology. In existing connected automated vehicle-based and traditional traffic control systems, urban arterials with signalized intersections still face issues, including local demand uncertainty and automation level compatibility. Here, a distributed signal control system that integrates automated vehicle path planning information is adapted to address these issues. The proposed method includes planning-based local demand estimation and demand-aware max pressure control in an edge computing environment. A bivariable automation model is developed to represent the various, i.e., L1-L5, automatic driving levels. A real district with typical scenarios is implemented to verify the proposed method. The simulation results show that the proposed demand-aware edge control provides better control results than benchmarks for almost all different performance indices and network demands. The proposed control reduces the waiting time by up to 30%, and the time loss decreased by up to 20%. Moreover, better performances are always obtained at different automation levels, so there is a good compatibility of the automation driving for the adaptation of the CAV flows, especially at the L3-L5 levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a detailed analysis of the impact of automated vehicles using eco-cruise control system on the traffic flow. The speed profiles of vehicles using eco-cruise control system generally differ from those of conventional human-driven vehicles. The characteristics of the traffic flow on macroscopic traffic level combine both automated and human-driven vehicles. In the simulation-based analysis the effects of traffic volume and the ratio of the automated vehicles are in the focus. Based on the results the analysis an extension of the eco-cruise control is also proposed, in which the balance between the traffic flow and transport efficiency is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging the accuracy and consistency of vehicle motion control enabled by the connected and automated vehicle technology, we propose the rhythmic control (RC) scheme that allows vehicles to pass through an intersection in a conflict-free manner with a preset rhythm. The rhythm enables vehicles to proceed at a constant speed without any stop. The RC is capable of breaking the limitation that right-of-way can only be allocated to nonconflicting movements at a time. It significantly improves the performance of intersection control for automated traffic. Moreover, the RC with a predetermined rhythm does not require intensive computational efforts to dynamically control vehicles, which may possibly lead to frequent accelerations or decelerations. Assuming stationary vehicle arrivals, we conduct a theoretical investigation to show that RC can considerably increase intersection capacity and reduce vehicle delay. Finally, the performance of RC is tested in the simulations with both stationary and nonstationary vehicle arrivals at both symmetric and asymmetric intersections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology is providing urban transportation managers tremendous opportunities for better operation of urban mobility systems. However, there are significant challenges in real-time implementation as the computational time of the corresponding operations optimization model increases exponentially with increasing vehicle numbers. Following the companion paper (Chen et al. 2021), which proposes a novel automated traffic control scheme for isolated intersections, this study proposes a network-level, real-time traffic control framework for CAVs on grid networks. The proposed framework integrates a rhythmic control method with an online routing algorithm to realize collision-free control of all CAVs on a network and achieve superior performance in average vehicle delay, network traffic throughput, and computational scalability. Specifically, we construct a preset network rhythm that all CAVs can follow to move on the network and avoid collisions at all intersections. Based on the network rhythm, we then formulate online routing for the CAVs as a mixed integer linear program, which optimizes the entry times of CAVs at all entrances of the network and their time–space routings in real time. We provide a sufficient condition that the linear programming relaxation of the online routing model yields an optimal integer solution. Extensive numerical tests are conducted to show the performance of the proposed operations management framework under various scenarios. It is illustrated that the framework is capable of achieving negligible delays and increased network throughput. Furthermore, the computational time results are also promising. The CPU time for solving a collision-free control optimization problem with 2,000 vehicles is only 0.3 second on an ordinary personal computer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While more studies have been focused on adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) algorithms to learn the control policy from interactions with the traffic environment by using connected and automated vehicle (CAV) data with no human intervention, less mechanism on streamlining the interactions between signal control regulations and CAV-data based traffic features has been integrated into the ATSC algorithms. Such underlying mechanism is of essence to make the CAV-data intelligent functions scalable to varied scales of ATSC system. The presented cyber-physical modeling methodology is attempted to fill in the gap through developing intelligent cell models embedded within the proposed roadside units data processors (RSU-DPs) (i.e., a V2X hub-signalized intersection), which can communicate with on-board units (OBU) mounted on vehicles through C-V2X technologies. The RSU-DPs can directly update the controller for dynamic update of vehicle status and arrivals at the concerned intersection approaches. The intelligent cell model is developed to connect the traffic flow status of the upstream and downstream intersections so as to dynamically adjust or ensure reasonable parameters for signal coordination control (such as offset and/or bandwidth). In this way, the naturalized CAV mobility data can be modeled as a "floating sensing mobility" data source from moving CAVs that will be potentially available ubiquitously on a cycle-to-cycle basis. The simulation-based experiments are designed to test the developed mechanism and models for producing core parameters for implementing the CAV-data-driven self-organized adaptive traffic signal coordination control and testing the functions for improving the efficiency of the corridor mobility, compared with traditional ATSC schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes enhanced prediction and control design methods for improving traffic flow with human-driven and automated vehicles. To achieve accurate prediction for the entire time horizon, data-driven and model-based prediction methods were integrated. The goal of the integration was to accurately predict the outflow of the traffic network, which was selected as the highway section in this paper. The proposed novel prediction method was used in the optimal design for calculating controlled inflows on highway ramps. The goal of the design was to reach the maximum outflow of the traffic network, even against disturbances on uncontrolled inflows of the network. The control design leads to an optimization problem based on the min–max principle, i.e., the traffic outflow is considered to be maximized by controlled inflows and to be minimized by uncontrolled inflows. The effectiveness of the prediction and the control methods through simulation examples are illustrated, i.e., traffic outflow can be maximized by the control system under various uncontrolled inflow values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An authorized traffic controller (ATC) has the highest priority for direct road traffic. In some irregular situations, the ATC supersedes other traffic control. Human drivers indigenously understand such situations and tend to follow the ATC; however, an autonomous vehicle (AV) can become confused in such circumstances. Therefore, autonomous driving (AD) crucially requires a human-level understanding of situation-aware traffic gesture recognition. In AVs, vision-based recognition is particularly desirable because of its suitability; however, such recognition systems have various bottlenecks, such as failing to recognize other humans on the road, identifying a variety of ATCs, and gloves in the hands of ATCs. We propose a situation-aware traffic control hand-gesture recognition system, which includes ATC detection and gesture recognition. Three-dimensional (3D) hand model-based gesture recognition is used to mitigate the problem associated with gloves. Our database contains separate training and test videos of approximately 60 min length, captured at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. It has 35,291 different frames that belong to traffic control hand gestures. Our approach correctly recognized traffic control hand gestures; therefore, the proposed system can be considered as an extension of the operational domain of the AV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]