Heterogeneous Traffic Groups Cooperative Driving Behaviours Research under Mixed Traffic Condition

Purpose and goal

The aim of this study is to develop methods for evaluating the safety and traffic flow impact when autonomous vehicles mixed with manually driven vehicles. The study includes: 1.Adapting the classic traffic flow theory to model the mixed traffic circumstance. 2.Developing a simulation and analysis tools for heterogeneous traffic groups. 3.Formulating an intelligent cooperative control strategy for heterogeneous traffic. 4.Performing behavioural studies using VTI’s driving simulator and traffic simulations for quantification on the impact of human factors on traffic flow.

Expected results and effects

Results achieved include: One journal paper [1] and one conference paper [2] are published. Presented a paper [2] at IEEE Intelligent Transportation System Conference (ITSC) 2020 Presented work SAFER seminars on 2020-10-15 and 2021-06-02. SAFER is the national Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University. VTI and Chalmers conducted supervision of 2 Master’s theses [13, 14]. Several papers (see list in section 6) are either under review or in-progress. Some are joint papers with researchers: VTI & Chalmers [3-5], Chalmers & Tsinghua [6], and Chalmers & Tongji [7-9].

Planned approach and implementation

The project partners have two recurring meetings to monitor progress, which takes place regularly once a month, one between the Swedish partners and one between all partners. VTI and the Chalmers teams meet more regularly to get a better crosstalk between different tasks. The Swedish and Chinese consortia had a meeting in China in October 2019. However, physical project meetings have been converted to digital meetings since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. A guest researcher from RIOH was planned to work at VTI for 1 year within the project, but the trip was cancelled due to the pandemic.