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Connected and autonomous driving technologies offer a novel solution for intersection control optimization. Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can access signal plans and optimize trajectories to minimize delays and reduce fuel consumption. However, optimizing trajectories for individual vehicles significantly increases complexity, especially for joint optimization of traffic signals and vehicle trajectories. Given the current technical, regulatory, and policy constraints, a superior intersection management approach is necessary before fully automated driving is achieved. This paper introduces an adaptive coupling control (ACC) method based on vehicle platooning to optimize signal timings and vehicle trajectories in mixed traffic. Initially, vehicle platoon segmentation is conducted, led by CAVs. The study then proposes a single‐layer coupled optimization model based on vehicle platoons, simplifying the joint optimization model. To address logistic constraint difficulties, a linearization of the coupled model (LCM) method is developed. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the ACC method significantly reduces vehicle delay and fuel consumption. At high CAV penetration rates (0.8 < R <1) and high traffic volumes (over 900 pcu/h), vehicle platoon control delivers excellent performance, with delays and fuel consumption even lower than in a fully automated environment (R = 1). This surprising result suggests that the mixed platoon system (ACC method) positively impacts mixed traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In urban areas, emergency vehicles (EVs) need efficient traffic signal preemption to ensure timely responses during peak hours. While emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption (EVTSP) has garnered significant attention in the literature, the issues of queue spillbacks and negative impacts on non‐priority traffic have been relatively underreported. These issues are particularly critical during peak hours, notably in densely populated urban areas. This study presents an EVTSP system that considers queue spillbacks on approaches along the routes of EVs and the negative impacts of signal preemption on non‐priority traffic. The proposed control system has four key components: (1) a queue length management algorithm to ensure that an EV will not be impeded by excessive queues, particularly on its initial approaches along its route; (2) a signal preemption algorithm to guarantee uninterrupted passage of an EV even for approaches experiencing queue spillbacks; (3) a traffic status recovery algorithm to alleviate the extra waiting time for non‐priority vehicles after an EV crosses each intersection; and (4) a signal plan recovery algorithm to smoothly transit traffic signals to normal operation. The experimental results confirm that the proposed system considerably improves the travel time of an EV and mitigates the negative impacts on non‐priority traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explicit signal coordination carries prior knowledge of traffic engineering and is widely accepted for global implementation. With the recent popularity of reinforcement learning, numerous researchers have turned to implicit signal coordination. However, these methods inevitably require learning coordination from scratch. To maximize the use of prior knowledge, this study proposes an explicit coordinated signal control (ECSC) method using a soft actor–critic for cycle length determination. This method can fundamentally solve the challenges encountered by traditional methods in determining the cycle length. Soft actor–critic was selected among various reinforcement learning methods. A single agent was administered to the arterials. An action is defined as the selection of a cycle length from among the candidates. The state is represented as a feature vector, including the cycle length and features of each leg at every intersection. The reward is defined as departures that indirectly minimize system vehicle delays. Simulation results indicate that ECSC significantly outperforms the baseline methods, as evident in system vehicle delay across nearly all demand scenarios and throughput in high demand scenarios. The ECSC revitalizes explicit signal coordination and introduces new perspectives on the application of reinforcement learning methods in signal coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing the speed of the vehicle can reduce the risk and severity of the collision. Automatic means of vehicle traffic operation control, such as automatic speed cameras, is one of the main methods to solve traffic violations such as speeding. This study takes the actual operation of the automated hardware complex for vehicle traffic control in the Russian Federation as the research objective, and discusses the impact of the application of automated hardware complex for vehicle traffic control on traffic safety. In the process of building the automated traffic flow monitoring system of urban agglomeration, it is necessary to form a set of methodology to evaluate the hardware complex of traffic infrastructure. According to the research results of the influence of vehicle traffic automation and control system on road safety, a model, method and algorithm were developed to evaluate the efficiency of automated hardware complex for vehicle traffic control. The relevant factors introduced into the intelligent transportation system for the overall evaluation of the application efficiency of the vehicle traffic operation control automation hardware complex were determined. A life cycle model of automated hardware complex for vehicle traffic operation control was established to evaluate its operation efficiency in the development stage of intelligent transportation system, and on this basis, the maneuverability standard of urban agglomeration traffic monitoring system management is determined. The results show that the number of hardware complexes used in vehicle traffic operation control has a positive impact on the road traffic accident rate. It is suggested that the standard of one hardware complex for every 6.5 thousand registered vehicles in this area should be used as an indicator of the equipment level of the integrated automated system for vehicle traffic control in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic impact of inefficient traffic control systems is significant owing to prolonged commute durations, and increased energy consumption. Traffic signal control systems (TSCSs) significantly influence traffic flows at intersections. Therefore, adaptive TSCSs (ATSCSs) that can adjust to traffic conditions in real‐time have been proposed as more efficient alternatives. However, the expensive implementation of these systems highlights the need for judicious investments in appropriate technologies and infrastructure. Therefore, a comprehensive technology roadmap should be built that guides the future development of traffic control and the infusion of technologies to address traffic needs. Additionally, as ATSCSs are developed and managed by local governments, the perspective of a government‐led technology roadmap is required to guide the roadmap development and implementation. Although studies have explored technology roadmaps across numerous sectors, the viewpoint of roadmap development guided by government entities is frequently neglected despite the role of these entities in shaping technological policies, underwriting research and development initiatives, and driving nationwide innovation strategies. In this study, a comprehensive framework is proposed for developing technology roadmaps tailored for systems and technologies led by governmental entities. This framework has been adapted from the Advanced Technology Roadmap Architecture (ATRA) and brought original adjustments thereby addressing the research gap. The study also presents strategic recommendations for the ATSCS implementation in South Korea, integrating systems engineering principles for a holistic approach to technological advancements. The framework can be replicated to serve as a guide for governments seeking to implement effective and efficient technology roadmaps for public infrastructure systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an integrated educational module for undergraduate traffic engineering at the microscale level. When dealing with a complex transportation system, the education program should cultivate students' acquisition of both in‐depth traffic specialization and breadth of engineering knowledge. For the educational instruction of the signal phase design, this article presents an integrated design that includes several engineering subjects: signal phase design, circuits and electronics, and object‐oriented programming (OOP). Due to the lengthy evolution of signal phase design and the high‐end industrial standards for this issue, this well‐structured problem requires an instructional design to adopt a worked example that integrates varied engineering domains. The integrated design session is intended to deliver education through designing a miniature signal controller while creating an immersive situation and encouraging social teamwork. Feedback from participating students has been positive, indicating the achievement of the planned learning objectives and better mastery of engineering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global urbanization and increasing traffic volume have intensified traffic congestion throughout transportation infrastructure, particularly at toll plazas, highlighting the critical need to implement proactive transportation infrastructure solutions. Traditional toll plaza management approaches, often relying on manual interventions, suffer from inefficiencies that fail to adapt to dynamic traffic flow and are unable to produce preemptive control strategies, resulting in prolonged queues, extended travel times, and adverse environmental effects. This study proposes a proactive traffic control strategy using advanced technologies to combat toll plaza congestion and optimize traffic management. The approach involves deep learning convolutional neural network models (YOLOv7–Deep SORT) for vehicle counting and an extended short-term memory model for short-term arrival rate prediction. When projected arrival rates exceed a threshold, the strategy proactively activates variable speed limits (VSLs) and ramp metering (RM) strategies during peak hours. The novelty of this study lies in its predictive and adaptive capabilities, ensuring efficient traffic flow management. Validated through a case study at Ravi Toll Plaza Lahore using PTV VISSIMv7, the proposed method reduces queue length by 57% and vehicle delays by 47% while cutting fuel consumption and pollutant emissions by 28.4% and 34%, respectively. Additionally, by identifying the limitations of conventional approaches, this study presents a novel framework alongside the proposed strategy to bridge the gap between theory and practice, making it easier for toll plaza operators and transportation authorities to adopt and benefit from advanced traffic management techniques. Ultimately, this study underscores the importance of integrated and proactive traffic control strategies in enhancing traffic management, minimizing congestion, and fostering a more sustainable transportation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning (ML) methods, particularly Reinforcement Learning (RL), have gained widespread attention for optimizing traffic signal control in intelligent transportation systems. However, existing ML approaches often exhibit limitations in scalability and adaptability, particularly within large traffic networks. This paper introduces an innovative solution by integrating decentralized graph-based multi-agent reinforcement learning (DGMARL) with a Digital Twin to enhance traffic signal optimization, targeting the reduction of traffic congestion and network-wide fuel consumption associated with vehicle stops and stop delays. In this approach, DGMARL agents are employed to learn traffic state patterns and make informed decisions regarding traffic signal control. The integration with a Digital Twin module further facilitates this process by simulating and replicating the real-time asymmetric traffic behaviors of a complex traffic network. The evaluation of this proposed methodology utilized PTV-Vissim, a traffic simulation software, which also serves as the simulation engine for the Digital Twin. The study focused on the Martin Luther King (MLK) Smart Corridor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, by considering symmetric and asymmetric road layouts and traffic conditions. Comparative analysis against an actuated signal control baseline approach revealed significant improvements. Experiment results demonstrate a remarkable 55.38% reduction in Eco_PI, a developed performance measure capturing the cumulative impact of stops and penalized stop delays on fuel consumption, over a 24 h scenario. In a PM-peak-hour scenario, the average reduction in Eco_PI reached 38.94%, indicating the substantial improvement achieved in optimizing traffic flow and reducing fuel consumption during high-demand periods. These findings underscore the effectiveness of the integrated DGMARL and Digital Twin approach in optimizing traffic signals, contributing to a more sustainable and efficient traffic management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing number of urban vehicles, as well as the current situation of non-intelligent traffic control systems, spatiotemporal non-uniform traffic resource occupation, and limited traffic planning and design, existing urban traffic planning methods cannot effectively solve problems such as frequent traffic congestion and uncontrollable commuting time for residents. In order to solve the above problems, this paper first constructs a multi-queue, multi-server queuing model based on the server vacation and a multi-hop cascaded queuing model from the perspective of local intersections and global commuting paths. We analyze the theoretical changes in passage delay costs at local intersections and on global commuting paths as a function of traffic flow and the random duration of traffic signals. On this basis, this article proposes a collaborative intelligent traffic planning algorithm based on artificial intelligence, which utilizes traffic sensors to dynamically perceive traffic congestion status and collaboratively plans the optimal duration of traffic signals and the optimal driving path of vehicles from both local and global perspectives, thereby maximizing the on-time arrival ratio of vehicles while ensuring the required commuting delay. The simulation results show that the proposed method can increase the on-time arrival ratio of vehicles by at least 20% compared to contrast methods while meeting the requirements relating to commuting delays. This verifies that our method can provide support for the improvement in efficiency in future Internet of vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

License plate detection is an important task in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and has a wide range of applications in vehicle management, traffic control, and public safety. In order to improve the accuracy and speed of mobile recognition, an improved lightweight YOLOv5s model is proposed for license plate detection. First, an improved Stemblock network is used to replace the original Focus layer in the network, which ensures strong feature expression capability and reduces a large number of parameters to lower the computational complexity; then, an improved lightweight network, ShuffleNetv2, is used to replace the backbone network of the YOLOv5s, which makes the model lighter and ensures the detection accuracy at the same time. Then, a feature enhancement module is designed to reduce the information loss caused by the rearrangement of the backbone network channels, which facilitates the information interaction in the feature fusion process; finally, the low‐, medium‐ and high‐level features in the Shufflenetv2 network structure are fused to form the final high‐level output features. Experimental results on the CCPD dataset show that compared to other methods this paper obtains better performance and faster speed in the license plate detection task, in which the average precision mean value reaches 96.6%, and can achieve a detection speed of 43.86 frame/s, and the parameter volume is reduced to 5.07 M. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Road accidents and traffic congestion are the unavoidable consequences of the growing number of vehicles on the road. Conventional management systems are not effective in mitigating these issues. However, a range of technologies, including sensors, processors, vehicle‐based resources, and mobile cloud computing, can help solve traffic and safety problems. Vehicular cloud networks, a cutting‐edge technology for the development of intelligent transportation systems, face significant challenges, such as ensuring reliable service providers that maintain stable connections between vehicles. Roadside units (RSUs) play a crucial role in these networks, but they come with several drawbacks, including high costs, imbalanced load distribution, and unreliable connections. To address these issues, we propose the Traffic Control and Safety in Vehicular Networks (TCaS‐VN) algorithm, a cloud‐based sharing services framework for vehicles that eliminates the need for RSUs. This approach offers several advantages, including a twofold improvement in the lifetime of clusters, the elimination of noncluster head nodes, a 54% reduction in overhead, a 58% reduction in service search time, and a success rate of over 95% in service provisioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic lights are crucial for urban traffic management, as they significantly impact congestion reduction and travel safety. Traditional methods relying on hand-crafted rules and operator experience are limited in their ability to adapt to changing traffic environments. To address this challenge, we have been exploring intelligent traffic light control using deep reinforcement learning techniques. However, current approaches often suffer from inadequate training data and unstable training processes, leading to suboptimal performance and real-world consequences. In this study, we propose RELight, a novel random ensemble reinforcement learning-based traffic light control framework. RELight effectively utilizes collected empirical data, ensuring a stable and efficient training process. To evaluate the performance of our proposed framework, we conducted a comprehensive set of experiments on a variety of datasets, including four synthetic datasets and a real traffic dataset collected from surveillance cameras at an intersection in Hangzhou, China. The results show that RELight outperforms existing approaches, demonstrating its superiority and potential for practical traffic light control applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have emerged as an efficient solution for enhancing road utilization efficiency, ensuring convenient and safe transportation, and reducing energy consumption. This research addresses the challenging problem of accurately estimating road traffic congestion from videos recorded in low visibility and adverse weather conditions such as rainy, overcast, and sunny weather. To solve this problem, we propose a method based on the use a custom Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) that we have designed and trained to classify nighttime road traffic videos into three distinct categories. To train and test this DCNN, we used nighttime videos from the UCSD (University of California San Diego) public dataset. For comparison, we have also tested a second method, which uses an existing CNN that we have trained on the same dataset to classify road traffic into the same three categories. The performances of the two methods were assessed and compared using the UCSD nighttime dataset. The first method achieves an impressive Correct Classification Rate (CCR) of 98.91%, which is higher than the 96.18% CCR achieved by the second method. These rates surpass the 89.47% state-of-the-art CCR obtained with this dataset. This exceptional precision in estimating road traffic congestion in challenging low visibility conditions is achieved thanks to the integration of advanced deep learning techniques and CNNs. The proposed method can be integrated as part of a traffic monitoring system, thus contributing to the advancement of Intelligent Transport Systems and their potential to create cleaner, safer, and more efficient transportation networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing demand for transportation, road renovation is inevitable, and the emergence of work zones has become the most common problem in traffic control. There are many research results on the impact of work zones on traffic operation, but most of them focus on various capacity theoretical models or traffic flow control strategies and are mostly concentrated in highway work areas and urban road subway construction work areas. The location of these work zones is often unable to be changed and is mostly considered reasonable. At present, there is still a gap in selecting and evaluating the location of the work zone. Therefore, this article studied a bidirectional six-lane intersection in Xi'an and investigated the situation of traffic flow distortion caused by the setting of work zones at the intersection. Two different positions and forms of work zones were designed for evaluation and analysis. Firstly, we used VISSIM (2022 student) to simulate the original and proposed work zone road-occupation schemes and analyzed six indicators. Finally, in order to determine the optimal work zone locations under different traffic situations, we applied the entropy weight method (EWM) to assign weights to multiple indicators, thereby achieving a comprehensive assessment of various schemes. The results showed that the highest improvement level among the six indicators was 50.2%, and different schemes adapted to different traffic situations. However, occupying two lanes of the median opposite the exit lane performed better under high traffic volume. Occupying the median and lanes on both sides of the median is suitable for low traffic volume. Occupying two lanes of the entrance lane and using the opposite lane as the left-turn entrance lane is suitable for situations with high traffic volume in the opposite lane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle trajectory prediction can provide important support for intelligent transportation systems in areas such as autonomous driving, traffic control, and traffic flow optimization. Predicting vehicle trajectories is an extremely challenging task that not only depends on the vehicle's historical trajectory but also on the dynamic and complex social-temporal relationships of the surrounding traffic network. The trajectory of the target vehicle is influenced by surrounding vehicles. However, existing methods have shortcomings in considering both time dependency and interactive dependency between vehicles or insufficient consideration of the impact of surrounding vehicles. To address this issue, we propose a hybrid deep learning model based on a temporal convolutional network (TCN) that considers local and global interactions between vehicles. Specifically, we use a social convolutional pooling layer to capture local interaction features between vehicles and a multihead self-attention layer to capture global interaction features between vehicles. Finally, we combine these two features using an encoder-decoder structure to predict vehicle trajectories. Through experiments on the Next-Generation Simulation (NGSIM) public dataset and ablation experiments, we validate the effectiveness of our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been significant development in intelligent technologies for urban traffic control, such as smart city and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. These advancements aim to provide more efficient and convenient services to participants in urban transportation. As the urban traffic control (UTC) system integrates with various networks and physical infrastructure, the potential threats of malicious attacks and breaches pose significant risks to the safety of individuals and their properties. To address this issue, this academic paper focuses on studying the network structure of the UTC system. A signal security game model is constructed based on the concepts of evolutionary game theory (EGT), involving three parties: attackers, upper computers (UC), and traffic signal machines (TSM). The model aims to analyze the evolutionary stability of the strategies chosen by each party, and to explore the relationships between various factors and the strategy choices of the three parties. Furthermore, the stability of equilibrium points in the three-party game system is analyzed using the Liapunov method. The conditions in which UC and TSM, dependent on detection rates and defense costs, choose to abandon defense at pure-strategy equilibrium points were obtained. Finally, MATLAB is utilized for simulation analysis to validate the impact of attack costs, defense costs, and detection rates on the information security of UTC systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing transportation infrastructure and traffic control systems face increasing strain as a result of rising demand, resulting in frequent congestion. Expanding infrastructure is not a feasible solution for enhancing the capacity of the road. Hence, Intelligent Transportation Systems are often employed to enhance the Level of Service (LoS). One such approach is Variable Speed Limit (VSL) control. VSL increases the LoS and safety on motorways by optimizing the speed limit according to the traffic conditions. The proliferation of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) presents fresh prospects for improving the operation and measurement of traffic states for the operation of the VSL control system. This paper introduces a method for the detection of multiple congested areas that is used for state estimation for a dynamically positioned VSL control system for urban motorways. The method utilizes Q-Learning (QL) and CAVs as mobile sensors and actuators. The proposed control approach, named Congestion Detection QL Dynamic Position VSL (CD-QL-DPVSL), dynamically detects all of the congested areas and applies two sets of actions, involving the dynamic positioning of speed limit zones and imposed speed limits for all detected congested areas simultaneously. The proposed CD-QL-DPVSL control approach underwent an evaluation across six distinct traffic scenarios, encompassing CAV penetration rates spanning from 10 % to 100 % and demonstrated a significantly better performance compared to other control approaches, including no control, rule-based VSL, two Speed-Transition-Matrices-based QL-VSL configurations with fixed speed limit zone positions, and a Speed-Transition-Matrices-based QL-DVSL with a dynamic speed limit zone position. It achieved enhancements in macroscopic traffic parameters such as the Mean Travel Time and Total Time Spent by adapting its control policy to every simulated scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid advancements in computer systems and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) motivate many intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) applications in smart cities, such as vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The WSN supports data exchange between mobile vehicles and servers to provide effective traffic control and smooth service for VANET users. However, the vehicle environment still faces many challenges. One of the VANET concerns is the privacy and security of data flows from heterogeneous systems. Therefore, we suggest a Provably Online/Offline Signcryption (POOSC) protocol for vehicular communication in VANET to preserve data confidentiality and ciphertext unforgeability. In this architecture, the transmitter registered in the Identity-Based Cryptosystems (IBC) environment can safely and efficiently communicate with the receiver in the Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) environment despite the limitations and challenges of heterogeneous systems. In a Random Oracle Model (ROM), we show that our protocol is safe against Indistinguishability-Adaptive Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks (IND-CCA2) under the Computational Diffie–Hellman (CDH) assumption and Existential Unforgeability-Adaptive Chosen Message Attacks (EUF-CMA) under the Discret-Logarithm (DL) assumption. Moreover, the POOSC protocol overcomes the certificate authority burden. Besides, we designed the POOSC protocol with a free pairing that achieves low computation cost and better scalability for VANET environments. The POOSC effectively meets non-repudiation, integrity, and authentication in a logically single step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries face the traffic related issues regardless of the wide effects adopted for developing and improving the traffic flow. Depending on the drawbacks of existing traffic management systems like inefficient time management, absence of priority options and lack of dynamic and adaptive services, the need for the incorporation of intelligent concepts is mandatory. This facilitates the replacing of traditional approaches with an array of sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) through vehicle traffic control system. In this paper, the intelligent traffic system (ITS) is proposed on the basis of techniques such as internet of vehicles (IOV) and vehicular adhoc network (VANET). A road side unit (RSU) controller connected with the traffic control system acts as the key component of ITS. The on board unit (OBU) is fixed with each vehicle, which exchanges the real time information with RSU (road side unit) and other OBUs. Additionally, an adaptive traffic management algorithm (ATMA) is provided to govern the ITS for the generation of high performance outputs. Furthermore effectiveness of ATMA in the proposed work is proved by simulation using Python. Eventually, the ATMA is compared with fixed-time (FT) algorithm and traffic signal control algorithm (TSCA) under various traffic conditions. The findings depicts that the proposed ATMA-based ITS outperforms the current traffic management systems in terms of average waiting time (AWT) obtained as 277.5s with respect to number of vehicles and 282.14s with respect to number of roads at an intersection. Added to this average number of serviced vehicles is given by 1731 with respect to the number of roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart cities can effectively improve urban life quality. But, with the rise in population size, there is an increase in the use of vehicles for transportation. In smart city development, traffic control and route planning are the primary tasks to address the problem of travel time estimation. It has become complex due to concerns of wrapped spatio-temporal data on dynamic real-time traffic conditions. The existing methods failed to estimate travel time efficiently due to not considering the spatio-temporal features and lack of computing resources. There is a need for a system like intelligent transportation system to monitor and accurately predict traffic flow to avoid traffic congestion and reduce the impact on the ecological system. This paper developed a novel hybrid deep learning model to estimate optimized travel time and possible trajectories. In this work, U-Net used to reduce the number of feature points for each temporal data and GNN is used to build the graph with connectivity between vehicular nodes. This hybrid model helps us predict traffic flow and aims to estimate accurate travel time from one location (node) to another. The model's performance is evaluated on the standard benchmark datasets Q-Traffic, TaxiBJ, and Chengdu. The experimental results show that the proposed framework significantly improves performance in extracting travel patterns and provides an optimal route with an estimated travel time than existing methods with RMSE 4%, MAE 20.49%, and MAPE 18%. The proposed model has accurately predicted the estimation of travel time of the vehicle for the given urban traffic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As urban areas continue to expand, traffic congestion has emerged as a significant challenge impacting urban governance and economic development. Frequent regional traffic congestion has become a primary factor hindering urban economic growth and social activities, necessitating improved regional traffic management. Addressing regional traffic optimization and control methods based on the characteristics of regional congestion has become a crucial and complex issue in the field of traffic management and control research. This paper focuses on the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) and aims to tackle the control problem without relying on traffic determination information. To address this, we introduce the Q-learning (QL) algorithm in reinforcement learning and the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) algorithm in deep reinforcement learning. Subsequently, we propose the MFD-QL perimeter control model and the MFD-DDPG perimeter control model. We conduct numerical analysis and simulation experiments to verify the effectiveness of the MFD-QL and MFD-DDPG algorithms. The experimental results show that the algorithms converge rapidly to a stable state and achieve superior control effects in optimizing regional perimeter control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of surveillance systems has led to exponential growth in collected data, enabling several advances in Deep Learning to exploit them and automate tasks for autonomous systems. Vehicle detection is a crucial task in the fields of Intelligent Vehicle Systems and Intelligent Transport systems, making it possible to control traffic density or detect accidents and potential risks. This paper presents an optimal meta-method that can be applied to any instant segmentation model, such as Mask R-CNN or YOLACT++. Using the initial detections obtained by these models and super-resolution, an optimized re-inference is performed, allowing the detection of elements not identified a priori and improving the quality of the rest of the detections. The direct application of super-resolution is limited because instance segmentation models process images according to a fixed dimension. Therefore, in cases where the super-resolved images exceed this fixed size, the model will rescale them again, thus losing the desired effect. The advantages of this meta-method lie mainly in the fact that it is not required to modify the model architecture or re-train it. Regardless of the size of the images given as input, super-resolved areas that fit the defined dimension of the object segmentation model will be generated. After applying our proposal, experiments show an improvement of up to 8.1% for the YOLACT++ model used in the Jena sequence of the CityScapes dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging technologies of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) provide innovative methods and have a great potential for developing new solutions to improve the efficiency of several intersection systems. Based on the multisource data collected from the transportation environments, CAVs with the cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) system could merge into platoons and traverse the intersection quickly and smoothly. Meanwhile, the traffic information about the CAVs enables intelligent traffic signal controls with the help of DRL technologies. This research investigates the performance of a state-shared multiagent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) controlled signal corridor with platooning-based CAVs. A corridor with seven intersections from the Ingolstadt Traffic Scenario (InTAS) in Germany is selected as a case study. The state information is shared between neighboring intersections to overcome the partial information observation of the decentralized agents in the MADRL framework. A platooning framework with specific CACC systems for the leading and following vehicles is proposed. Results indicate that the state-shared MADRL with CAV platoons could significantly decrease the total waiting time, average queue length, and total CO2 emission of the corridor by 80%, 73%, and 54%, respectively, which could be beneficial in further improving the intersection efficiency, designing future intersections, and cooperating signals and CAVs platoons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) with their evolving data gathering capabilities will play a significant role in road safety and efficiency applications supported by Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs), such as Traffic Signal Control (TSC) for urban traffic congestion management. However, their involvement will expand the space of security vulnerabilities and create larger threat vectors. In this article, we perform the first detailed security analysis and implementation of a new cyber-physical attack category carried out by the network of CAVs against Adaptive Multi-Agent Traffic Signal Control (AMATSC), namely, coordinated Sybil attacks, where vehicles with forged or fake identities try to alter the data collected by the AMATSC algorithms to sabotage their decisions. Consequently, a novel, game-theoretic mitigation approach at the application layer is proposed to minimize the impact of such sophisticated data corruption attacks. The devised minimax game model enables the AMATSC algorithm to generate optimal decisions under a suspected attack, improving its resilience. Extensive experimentation is performed on a traffic dataset provided by the city of Montréal under real-world intersection settings to evaluate the attack impact. Our results improved time loss on attacked intersections by approximately 48.9%. Substantial benefits can be gained from the mitigation, yielding more robust adaptive control of traffic across networked intersections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic flow prediction plays an important role in intelligent transportation systems and is of great significance in the applications of traffic control and urban planning. Due to the complexity of road traffic flow data, traffic flow prediction has been one of the challenging tasks to fully exploit the spatiotemporal characteristics of roads to improve prediction accuracy. In this study, a combined flow direction level traffic flow prediction graph convolutional network (GCN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) model based on spatiotemporal characteristics is proposed. First, a GCN model is employed to capture the topological structure of the data graph and extract the spatial features of road networks. Additionally, due to the capability to handle long-term dependencies, the longterm memory is used to predict the time series of traffic flow and extract the time features. The proposed model is evaluated using real-world data, which are obtained from the intersection of Liuquan Road and Zhongrun Avenue in the Zibo High-Tech Zone of China. The results show that the developed combined GCNLSTM flow direction level traffic flow prediction model can perform better than the single models of the LSTM model and GCN model, and the combined ARIMA- LSTM model in traffic flow has a strong spatiotemporal correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of road conditions can effectively alleviate traffic congestion and guide people's travel plans, traffic control decisions of transportation departments, and formulation of traffic-related laws and regulations. This paper proposes a quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) and adaptive hybrid exponential smoothing with residual correction (AHES-RC) for the nonlinearity and randomness of traffic flow. In the proposed algorithm, the single–double-exponential smoothing method is mixed with adaptive weights to form AHES, a new method of mixing weights according to real-time traffic trend changes. After the residual correction of AHES is calculated by the extreme learning machine algorithm, the parameters of AHES-RC are optimized using QPSO to improve the prediction accuracy further. This paper comprehensively compares the QPSO-AHES-RC algorithm with other benchmark models through testing on 26 real-world data sets. The results show that the proposed algorithm can adaptive forecasting under various traffic conditions, yielding the best forecasting performance in terms of various forecast error metrics. Compared with advanced machine learning algorithms such as XGBoost and CatBoost, the mean RMSE and mean MAPE have been improved by over 20% on average. In addition, it is revealed that the real-time dynamic capture of traffic flow can effectively improve prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing congestion levels and their elusive impact warrants the development of congestion mitigation strategies. Quantifying congestion and analyzing the spatiotemporal variations is imperative to achieve this target. Travel time is being explored as a measure of congestion with the advent of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and the deployment of related technologies. Researchers identified congested conditions when the average travel time exceeds 1.33 or 1.66 times free-flow travel time (FFTT). It is well known that travel time under congested conditions (T c) is more sensitive to land use, road geometry, and traffic control characteristics than the FFTT. Therefore, the extension of FFTT to derive T c may not be appropriate. This study focuses on developing a hazard-based model to derive T c. Travel time is modeled using a parametric accelerated failure time (AFT) model. The applicability of the proposed methodology is justified using empirical and simulated datasets. The T c derived from the AFT model is close to the travel time for the level of service (LOS F). Based on the T c , a new measure of congestion, termed congestion index (CI), is proposed. The proposed index can quantify the frequency and intensity of congestion on a link or network. The traffic states identified based on CI were mapped on the fundamental diagram (FD) and the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD). It was concluded that if travel times are uncertain and unstable under low-density conditions, then the ascending leg of the FD or MFD can be marked congested. Uncertain and unstable travel times indicate that traffic flow is unstable, and therefore, it can be concluded that traffic instabilities significantly affect congestion. • A hazard-based duration model is applied to model travel times to derive travel time under congested conditions. • Travel time corresponding to the inflection point of hazard function was considered as travel time under congested conditions. • Instabilities in travel times under low-density conditions mark the ascending leg of the fundamental diagram as congested. • The application of the study is demonstrated by evaluating the effect of traffic signal control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microscopic traffic simulation is a powerful tool for studying complex traffic systems when analytical or empirical approaches cannot define response patterns adequately and accurately. The application of simulation techniques for evaluating the characteristics of controlled intersections is effective due to their quick and reliable outcomes. This paper presents a methodology for model development and a unique calibration process for mixed traffic streams using the widely used simulation software Vissim. An isolated signalised intersection was selected for the model development. Most of the calibration methodologies described in previous literature were based on informal practices based on a homogeneous traffic stream. This study frames a novel calibration process suitable for mixed traffic streams. The validity of the proposed methodology was evaluated using field data from another signalised intersection by means of a feasibility comparison of field data and simulation outputs. The calibrated parameters produced suitable simulation outputs, with the measure of effectiveness matching the result obtained from actual field conditions. In contrast, simulations with default or best-guess parameters resulted in significant discrepancies between the observed and simulated outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of rapid urbanization in contemporary cities has resulted in a rise in traffic congestion, accidents, and pollution, leading to negative impacts on transportation efficiency and urban development. In response, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have emerged as a crucial field of research and development, with a goal to leverage technological advancements to enhance transportation safety, efficiency, and sustainability. However, traditional expert systems and traffic control methods have displayed limitations in handling the complexities of urban transportation. To address these challenges in Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMSs), this paper pro- poses a new approach utilizing Graph Neural Network-Reinforcement Learning (GNN-RL). By using GNNs for pre-training and information aggregation from the entire grid, our method enables downstream RL tasks, allowing for fine-tuning of effective global information aggregation and dynamic traffic signal control policy adjustment. The GNN-RL approach offers enhanced adapt- ability and performance in managing long-term dependencies, rendering it a promising alternative for traffic control in contemporary urban transportation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) have emerged to provide a range of intelligent transport services that optimize traffic management, improve the travel experience of road users, increase road safety and security, and reduce the negative environmental impacts of transport. C-ITS, which aim to ensure that intelligent transport services function effectively and efficiently, communicate and exchange data with vehicles, road users, traffic control centers, and road infrastructure as well. In this study, an overview of C-ITS related activities in the world and in Türkiye are discussed. C-ITS studies in literature and the objectives and benefits of C-ITS, its stakeholders, its relationship with ITS, its components and services are examined. After summarizing C-ITS studies in the world, policies and strategies in Europe, USA and Asian countries, and the current situation in Türkiye is provided. In addition, since there are limited studies on C-ITS in Türkiye, where ITS is still in its development stage, it is aimed to contribute to the literature by presenting recommendations for Türkiye to support the dissemination of C-ITS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technology that can recognize the license plates of vehicles in real time and manage them automatically is a key element of building an intelligent transportation system. License plate recognition is the most important technique in vehicle image processing used to identify a vehicle. Object recognition using a camera is greatly influenced by environmental factors in which the camera is installed. When the vehicle image is acquired, the image is distorted due to the tilting of the license plate, reflection of light, lighting effects, rainy weather, and nighttime, so that it is difficult to accurately recognize the license plate. In addition, when the geometric distortion of the license plate image or the degradation of the image quality is intensified, it may be more difficult to automatically recognize the license plate image. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a deep learning–based vehicles' license plate recognition method to detect license plate and recognize characters accurately in complex and diverse environments. As a deep learning model, the YOLO model can be used to detect robust license plates in a variety of environments and to recognize characters quickly and accurately. It can also be seen that the license plate accurately recognizes the license plate with geometric distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centralized traffic grid signal control by the reinforcement learning method is challenging due to the difficulties of searching policy in the large state and action space. In order to solve these problems, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method via the action and state decomposition mechanism is proposed. We apply long short‐term memory to construct the agent which decomposes the high‐dimensional state and action space into sub‐spaces and makes decisions incrementally. This is a significant difference between our method and other methods. Through the specifically designed structure of the agent, the difficulty of searching policies can be mitigated, and our method can effectively control the traffic lights in a grid with hundreds of intersections. Experiments on synthetic data and real‐world data show that our method has better performance than traditional control methods and state‐of‐the‐art DRL‐based methods with an improvement of 21% on the queue length on synthetic data and the best travel time with an improvement of 9.35% on real‐world data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short-term traffic flow prediction plays a significant role in various applications of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), such as road traffic control and route guidance. This requires the development of intelligent prediction approaches for accurate and timely traffic flow information. To handle this issue, this paper emphasizes the potential of a new idea to propose a high-quality and intelligent prediction of short-term traffic flow in ITS. The proposed model, referred to as ITS-Pro-Flow, takes the benefits of the well-known Profile-Energy (Pro-Energy) as a landmark solution, relying on past observations and current conditions to forecast future short-term traffic flow volume. ITS-Pro-Flow has an effective prediction mechanism due to its unique enhancements over Pro-Energy. The distinctive feature of ITS-Pro-Flow is that it dynamically adjusts the contributions of past predictions and current observations for a particular prediction, which is equally performed in Pro-Energy. We prove the performance of ITS-Pro-Flow through extensive simulations with 2 datasets, in comparison to Pro-Energy and IPro-Energy. Performance results clearly indicate that ITS-Pro-Flow provides more accurate predictions than other schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the system development of a co-simulation platform aimed at studying driving behavior with multiple participants. The objective of this study was to create an immersive and interactive environment where different driving scenarios could be simulated and driver behavior could be recorded and analyzed. The platform integrated the Unity game engine with the VISSIM microscopic traffic simulator to create a hybrid simulation environment that combined the advantages of both tools. A virtual reality massive multiplayer online (VRMMO) module was developed to capture the interactions of the participants during the simulation experiments. The external control devices of this co-simulation platform were calibrated using the empirical data of a Controller Area Network (CAN-BUS) from actual driving behaviors. The main contributions of this study are the demonstration of the Unity–VISSIM co-simulation platform in simulating interactive driver behavior and the potential for its use in various research areas, such as intelligent transportation systems, human factors, driving education, and traffic safety analyses. The platform could be a valuable tool for evaluating the effectiveness of collective intelligence countermeasures in improving traffic systems, with relatively lower costs and risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the influence of time delay effect and steady flow control strategy on traffic flow. Consider that the time delay in sensing flux information during the operation of traffic system is inevitable. Meanwhile, a new method is applied to model and analyse traffic system. A novel discrete‐time lattice hydrodynamic model considering time delay is introduced in this paper. Based on the proposed model with constant and varying time‐delay, the asymptotic stabilities are investigated and corresponding stable conditions are derived. The traffic flow evolution trend with and without time delay is conducted and compared by numerical simulations. Also, under the influence of different control gain conditions, density wave characteristics for traffic flow system with time delay are intuitively shown. The results indicate that time delay effect in sensing density and flux information can aggravate traffic congestion, and traffic congestion will be effectively relieved by considering steady flow control signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, telesurgery, as a branch of telemedicine, is growing at great speed. In telesurgery, a remote surgeon can communicate with operating room through communication networks in order to perform remote operation. Because human life is at stake in telesurgery, it is necessary to implement appropriate Traffic Engineering (TE) techniques to manage and route telesurgical data traffics over communication networks. Implementing proper TE technique can increase Quality of Experience (QoE) for the remote surgeon, and as a result, it increases the accuracy and performance of telesurgery. In recent years, the advent of Software Defined Network (SDN) has facilitated network providers to develop efficient TE methods to guarantee QoE for their customer applications. In this paper, a novel multi-objective TE technique called SMOTE is proposed to guarantee QoE for telesurgery applications over SDN. The goal of this paper is to enable a network administrator to provide a satisfactory remote operation by providing QoE for the remote surgeon. The objectives, which are considered in our proposed method, are the minimization of end-to-end delay and packet loss. SMOTE uses Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) a well-known multi-objective algorithm, to solve the optimization model for calculating optimal routes between the remote surgeon and the operating room. We conducted comprehensive simulations to evaluate the performance of SMOTE in terms of QoE. Simulation results confirmed that SMOTE guarantees QoE in telesurgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate travel time prediction (TTP) is a significant aspect in the intelligent transportation system (ITS). Travel times of certain road segments explicitly reflect the traffic conditions of those sections. Effective TTP of road segments is instrumental in route planning, traffic control, and traffic management. However, the accuracy of TTP is greatly affected by the intricate topological structure of traffic network and the dynamics of traffic flow over time. This paper develops a TTP method based on the spatial-feature-based hierarchical clustering (SFHC) and deep multi-input gated recurrent unit (DMGRU). The proposed two-stage method is capable of capturing the spatial-temporal features of traffic network. Specifically, the SFHC divides the road segments into several clusters having similar traffic features, and then the clustered data is fed into the DMGRU for TTP. Our experiments conducted on the practical dataset demonstrate that the designed prediction method can achieve the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 3.3109% and mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.5658, which outperform various combinations of baseline clustering algorithms and prediction models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A partial grey prediction model with control matrix (CMPGM(1, M)) is proposed. • The matrices sequence and partial derivatives of mean sequence are used to replace the points sequence. • The novel model can predict traffic flow with better accuracy amongst the comparison models. Short-term traffic flow analysis is the core part of the intelligent transportation system, and also the critical basis for traffic management and control system to guide traffic flow. Real-time and accurate short-term traffic flow prediction can be effectively applied to traffic control and guidance, providing reliable and effective information for traffic managers and travelers, and improving travel efficiency. Based on the spatiotemporal characteristics of traffic flow and periodicity of traffic flow, this paper uses partial differential equation variables to reflect the spatiotemporal characteristics of traffic flow, combines the modelling mechanism of partial differential and the grey prediction model organically, and establishes a partial grey prediction model with control matrix by using the partial derivatives of the mean sequence. At the same time, the parameters estimation and modelling steps of the novel model are obtained by matrix analysis and recursion. A set of data is used from two perspectives to verify the proposed model's effectiveness. Experimental results show that the proposed model is stable and effective. Finally, the novel model is applied to the short-time traffic flow simulation and prediction of the highway. The research results show that the novel model is better than other comparison models. The novel model mainly aims at the matrix data form of traffic flow and is applied to general short-term traffic flow prediction. On the one hand, the prediction results of the novel model can provide theoretical basis and basic methods for the traffic management system, traffic data for traffic information system, and new ideas for the traffic flow prediction research. On the other hand, it can help traffic managers solve accurate real-time traffic flow information, provide real-time traffic information for travelers, and help them plan and adjust routes in advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic flow prediction is one of the most important tasks of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) for traffic management, and it is also a challenging task affected by many complex factors, such as weather and time. Many cities adopt efficient traffic prediction methods to control traffic congestion. However, most of the existing methods of traffic prediction focus on urban road scenarios, neglecting the complexity of multivariate auxiliary information in highways. Moreover, these methods have difficulty explaining the prediction results based only on the historical traffic flow sequence. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel traffic prediction model, namely Multi-variate and Multi-horizon prediction based on Long Short-Term Memory (MMLSTM). MMLSTM can effectively incorporate auxiliary information, such as weather and time, based on a strategy of multi-horizon time spans to improve the prediction performance. Specifically, we first exploit a multi-horizon bidirectional LSTM model for fusing the multivariate auxiliary information in different time spans. Then, we combine an attention mechanism and multi-layer perceptron to conduct the traffic prediction. Furthermore, we can use the information of multivariate (weather and time) to provide interpretability to manage the model. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on Hangst and Metr-la datasets, and MMLSTM achieves better performance than baselines on traffic prediction tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Chongqing University of Technology (Natural Science) is the property of Chongqing University of Technology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pedestrian safety has become a critical consideration in developing society especially road traffic, an intelligent transportation need of the hour is the solution left. India tops the world with 11% of global road accidents. With this data, we have moved in the direction of computer vision applications for efficient and accurate pedestrian detection for intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The important application of this research is robot development, traffic management and control, unmanned vehicle driving (UVD), intelligent monitoring and surveillance system, and automatic pedestrian detection system. Much research has focused on pedestrian detection, but sustainable solution-driven research must still be required to overcome road accidents. We have proposed a wireless sensor network-based pedestrian detection system that classifies the real-time set of pedestrian activity and samples the reciprocally received signal strength (RSS) from the sensor node. We applied a histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) descriptor algorithm K-nearest neighbor, decision tree and linear support vector machine to measure the performance and prediction of the target. Also, these algorithms have performed a comparative analysis under different aspects. The linear support vector machine algorithm was trained with 481 samples. The performance achieves the accuracy of 98.90%and has accomplished superior results with a maximum precision of 0.99, recall of 0.98, and F-score of 0.95 with 2% error rate. The model's prediction indicates that it can be used in the intelligent transportation system. Finally, the limitation and the challenges discussed to provide an outlook for future research direction to perform effective pedestrian detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current transport infrastructure and traffic management systems are overburdened due to the increasing demand for road capacity, which often leads to congestion. Building more infrastructure is not always a practical strategy to increase road capacity. Therefore, services from Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) are commonly applied to increase the level of service. The growth of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) brings new opportunities to the traffic management system. One of those approaches is Variable Speed Limit (VSL) control, and in this paper a VSL based on Q-Learning (QL) using CAVs as mobile sensors and actuators in combination with Speed Transition Matrices (STMs) for state estimation is developed and examined. The proposed Dynamic STM-QL-VSL (STM-QL-DVSL) algorithm was evaluated in seven traffic scenarios with CAV penetration rates ranging from 10 % to 100 % . The proposed STM-QL-DVSL algorithm utilizes two sets of actions that include dynamic speed limit zone positions and computed speed limits. The proposed algorithm was compared to no control, rule-based VSL, and two STM-QL-VSL configurations with fixed VSL zones. The developed STM-QL-DVSL outperformed all other control strategies and improved measured macroscopic traffic parameters like Total Time Spent ( T T S ) and Mean Travel Time ( M T T ) by learning the control policy for each simulated scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, most smart cities face massive traffic issues every day. The smart cities' significant challenge is the traffic control system, wherein some places are automated and cost-effective. In this manuscript, cloud-assisted Internet of things Intelligent Transportation System (CIoT-ITS) is proposed to overcome traffic management's challenges. Here, the IoT sensor integrated camera is installed in every traffic signal corner to monitor the vehicle's flow. Further, the optimised vehicle flow data is sent to the cloud processes. The data from the various signal corners runs an algorithm to detect traffic direction and controls the signal lights. The alert notification is sent to the nearest traffic control room during traffic congestion using IoT sensors. Simulation analysis proved that the proposed CIoT-ITS could monitor and manage the vehicle flow successfully and automatically. The proposed system has been validated based on the optimisation parameter, which outperforms conventional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]