Open Access

ARTICLE

The Cellular Automaton Model of Microscopic Traffic Simulation Incorporating Feedback Control of Various Kinds of Drivers

by Yonghua Zhou¹, Chao Mi¹, Xun Yang¹

1 School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Email: yhzhou@bjtu.edu.cn

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2012, 86(6), 533-550. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2012.086.533

Abstract

The cellular automaton (CA) model for traffic flow describes the restrictive vehicle movements using the distance headway (gap) between two adjacent vehicles. However, the autonomous and synergistic behaviors also exist in the vehicle movements. This paper makes an attempt to propose a microscopic traffic simulation model such that the feedback control behavior during the driving process is incorporated into the CA model. The acceleration, speed holding and deceleration are manipulated by the difference between the gap and the braking reference distance the driver perceives, which is generally observed in the realistic traffic. The braking reference distance is related to the current speed and braking performance of vehicle grasped by the driver. Consequently, the proposed CA model with feedback control (CA-FC) can assign the vehicle with rationale acceleration and deceleration rates which aim at maintaining the moderate safe-driving distance to the preceding adjacent vehicle and thereby accomplishing the speed tracking with regard to that vehicle. Besides, the variety and randomness of driving behaviors are kept through the adjustable parameters for the conservative, prudent and aggressive drivers. The comparative study of CA-CF model with the typical CA and car following (CF) models is undertaken using the go-and-stop cases without and with signal control. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CA-FC model can replicate the restrictive, autonomous and synergistic behaviors of vehicle movements. The consistency is revealed with the macroscopic property of traffic flow such as the relationship between any two of density, flow and speed.

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Keywords

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