Simulating the effectiveness of wave dissipation by FollowerStopper autonomous vehicles

The traffic jam phenomenon known as stop-and-go waves is commonplace on many roadways and unavoidable due to the imperfect nature of human driving behaviour. Previous research by Stern et al. (2018) has demonstrated experimentally that a single Autonomous Vehicle (AV) can be harnessed dissipate produced 20 other passenger vehicles in cycle. However, experiment was conducted an idealistic situation single-lane ring road with one AV; meaning no lane changing possible multiple AV interaction left untested. To address these limitations, behaviour used achieve this, FollowerStopper (FS), modelled for use Aimsun simulation software validated before further numerical experiments were conducted. microsimulation scenarios designed observe how AVs driven FS controller (referred FS-AVs this paper) affect their wave dissipation capability. Both double-lane roads experimental designs latter capturing untested effect changes. FS-AV found less effective than originally documented both cases. Multiple included within still able improve flow waves, although it sensitive combination different factors any deviation away from ideal condition likely produce worse-off operations terms flow. For double-lanes, human-driven (HDVs) would change lanes at heightened rates occupy larger gap needs its dissipating strategy, causing pullback set off chain reaction upstream traffic. Stop-and-go had not been dissipated decreased performance flow, speed delay time resulted. Our results also showed dampening does translate between linear equivalent. On hand, our preliminary using real-life freeway model did suggest worsen conditions. contradicting might conditions such vehicle density. Further required investigate what could adversely FS-AV’s ability dampen shockwaves explore improvement algorithm.