AGENT-BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION OF COOPERATIVE DRIVING

Author

Alexander Yuki Kurz, University of Rhode IslandFollow

Date of Award

2014

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Systems Engineering

Department

Mechanical, Industrial and Systems Engineering

First Advisor

Manbir S. Sodhi

Abstract

Cooperative driving is defined as the automated coordination of vehicles based on advanced sensors and telematics. Vehicle-2-X (V2X) technology is emerging as a critical component in the development of autonomous cars. Even though individual sensors and vehicle level systems have become very advanced, their effectiveness must be proven in real traffic conditions. A prelude to on-road deployment is simulation based testing. This overcomes the shortcomings of real world experiments as it is cost-intensive and not feasible for potentially dangerous situation. Implementing adequate traffic simulation requires accurate models of single car behaviors, which lead to representative intervehicle interactions on actual roadways. This thesis presents a review of existing models of microscopic traffic simulations and the current research on coordination strategies for cooperative driving focusing on automated platooning. Coordination paradigms including centralized and decentralized approaches for formation and synchronization of vehicle groups are reported and discussed. Recent work on in the area addresses specific scenarios of cooperative driving. The thesis at hand proposes a decentralized coordination model of platooning. In detail, this is achieved by modifying existing car-following models that are reviewed beforehand. The proposed Cooperative Platoon Model (CPM) is an extension of the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) and Gipps’ Following Model that achieves coordination through coupled communication. A further contribution to this thesis is the development of a microscopic traffic simulation environment that serves as a platform for implementing the CPM. First simulation results show solid performance of the CPM in stability and the gap spacing strategy. The simulation environment is programmed in Python 2.7.

Recommended Citation

Kurz, Alexander Yuki, "AGENT-BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION OF COOPERATIVE DRIVING" (2014). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 470.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/470