United States Department of Transportation
i
What Do Autonomous Vehicles Mean to Traffic Congestion and Crash?: Network Traffic Flow Modeling and Simulation for Autonomous Vehicles
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2016-01-01
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[PDF-346.40 KB]
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Abstract:Transportation infrastructure is quickly moving towards revolutionary changes to accommodate the deployment of AVs. On the other hand, the transition to new vehicle technologies will be shaped in large part by changes in performance of roadway infrastructure. This research aims at understanding the relationship between AV technology and infrastructure performance, which leads to revolutionary change in transportation infrastructure design in the both short and long term. For nearly a century, traffic flow in the roadway networks is operated purely by human beings. Human’s reactions to preceding vehicles and side vehicles almost dominate the driving behavior, which is to be replaced by vehicle automation/communication in the future. The technology for autonomous and connected vehicles is rapidly approaching the point of commercial implementation. AVs are cars that can be fully controlled by computers, instead of people, relying upon on-board advanced sensors and computers to observe and interpret road conditions and determine a safe course of action. Connected vehicles, on the other hand, receive data from other vehicles, or a central system, that then instructs them how to operate safely. Generally there is a significant developmental overlap between the two, with future autonomous connected vehicles able to receive data from itself, other cars and systems, and capable of driving themselves or accepting control from external systems. With an assigned time and path, these lightweight, self-guided cars would proceed steadily through crowded infrastructure without all the stop-and-go that chokes roadways and saps fuel efficiency. Many of the enabling technologies, such as adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning systems, already exist. We envision that the pathways of AV and connected vehicle development are likely to converge in the long run. This research uses ‘autonomous vehicle (AV)’ to represent ‘autonomous connected vehicle’.
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