TY - JOUR
T1 - Traffic Flow on a Ring with a Single Autonomous Vehicle
T2 - An Interconnected Stability Perspective
AU - Giammarino, Vittorio
AU - Baldi, Simone
AU - Frasca, Paolo
AU - Monache, Maria Laura Delle
N1 - Accepted Author Manuscript
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In recent years, field experiments have been performed on ring roadways with human-driven vehicles or with a mix of human-driven and autonomous vehicles. While these experiments demonstrate the potential for controlling traffic flows by a small number of autonomous vehicles, the theoretical framework about such a possibility is to a large extent incomplete. Indeed, most work on mixed traffic focused on classical asymptotical stability notions, neglecting that human drivers are prone to the interconnected instability known in the literature as string instability. This work aims to enhance the existing theories to meet the questions raised by the field experiments. It starts from the observation that the standard notion of string stability on a ring roadway is too demanding for a mixed traffic scenario: therefore, a new interconnected stability definition, named weak ring stability, is proposed. This new interconnected stability notion, in combination with classical stability, is able to explain phenomena observed in field experiments and to highlight possibilities and limitations of traffic control via sparse autonomous vehicle. Furthermore, it allows designing AV controllers with improved string stability specifications, at the price of reducing the sparsity of the autonomous vehicles.
AB - In recent years, field experiments have been performed on ring roadways with human-driven vehicles or with a mix of human-driven and autonomous vehicles. While these experiments demonstrate the potential for controlling traffic flows by a small number of autonomous vehicles, the theoretical framework about such a possibility is to a large extent incomplete. Indeed, most work on mixed traffic focused on classical asymptotical stability notions, neglecting that human drivers are prone to the interconnected instability known in the literature as string instability. This work aims to enhance the existing theories to meet the questions raised by the field experiments. It starts from the observation that the standard notion of string stability on a ring roadway is too demanding for a mixed traffic scenario: therefore, a new interconnected stability definition, named weak ring stability, is proposed. This new interconnected stability notion, in combination with classical stability, is able to explain phenomena observed in field experiments and to highlight possibilities and limitations of traffic control via sparse autonomous vehicle. Furthermore, it allows designing AV controllers with improved string stability specifications, at the price of reducing the sparsity of the autonomous vehicles.
KW - autonomous vehicle
KW - control of traffic flow
KW - ring roadway
KW - stability of traffic
KW - String stability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112758716&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TITS.2020.2985680
DO - 10.1109/TITS.2020.2985680
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85112758716
VL - 22
SP - 4998
EP - 5008
JO - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
SN - 1524-9050
IS - 8
ER -