Cooperative highway traffic : multi-agent modeling and robustness assessment to local perturbations
Résumé
As cooperative systems, a.k.a. connected vehicles, enable the communication and exchange of information between vehicles and infrastructure, it is expected that their communication capabilities can lead to a better dynamic traffic management on urban motorways. In such a context, technological constraints must be the basis for any management strategy. If it has been analytically proven that communication can help stabilize traffic flow at a microscopic level, it is interesting to evaluate realistic communication strategies taking into consideration multiple perturbations such as time delays, sensors errors or driver cooperation. In this paper, a three-layer multi-agent framework is used to model and control the homogenization of traffic flow based on stability criteria. The physical layer coordinates the movement of vehicles based on traffic dynamics. A distributed control term is incorporated into the model. It is derived from the communication and trust layers that respectively manage information and its reliability. Results from simulation highlight the impact of the designed communication rules and of the control parameters on traffic flow stability.