Modeling Automated Vehicles and Connected Automated Vehicles on Highways

Abstract

The deployment of Automated Vehicles (AV) is starting to become widespread throughout transportation, resulting in the recognition and awareness by legislative leaders of the potential impact on transportation operations. To assist transportation operators in making the needed preparations for these vehicles, an in-depth study regarding the impact of AV and Connected Automated Vehicles (CAV) is needed. In this research, the impact of AV and CAV on the highway setting is studied. This study addresses car-following models that are currently used for simulating AV and CAV. Diverse car-following models, such as the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM), the IDM with traffic adaptive driving Strategy (SIDM), the Improved IDM (IIDM), the IIDM with Constant-Acceleration Heuristic (CAH), and the MIcroscopic model for Simulation of Intelligent Cruise control (MIXIC) were examined with the state-of-the-art vehicle trajectory data. The Highway Drone dataset (HighD) were analyzed through the implementation of genetic algorithm to gain more insight about the trajectories of these vehicles. In 2020, there is no commercially available gully automated vehicle available to the public, although many companies are conducting in field testing. This research generated AV trajectories based on the actual vehicle trajectories from the High-D dataset and adjusts those trajectories to account for ideal AV operations. The analysis from the fitted trajectory data shows that the calibrated IIDM with CAH provides a best fit on AV behavior. Next, the AV and CAV were modeled in microscopic perspective to show the impact of these vehicles on a corridor. The traffic simulation software, VISSIM, modified by implementing an external driver model to govern the interactions between Legacy Vehicles (LV), AV, and CAV on a basic and merging highway segment as well as a model of the Interstate 95 corridor south of Richmond, Virginia. From the analysis, this research revealed that the AV and CAV could increase highway capacity significantly. Even with a small portion of AV or CAV, the roadway capacity increased. On I-95, CAV performed better than AV because of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) and platooning due to CAV's ability to coordinate movement through communication; however, in weaving segments, CAV underperformed AV. This result indicates that the CAV algorithms would need to be flexible in order to maintain flow in areas with weaving sections. Lastly, diverse operational conditions, such as different heavy vehicle market penetration and different aggressiveness were examined to support traffic operators transition to the introduction of AV and CAV. Based on the analysis, the study concludes that the different aggressiveness could mitigate congestion in all cases if the proper aggressiveness level is selected considering the current traffic condition. Overall, the dissertation provides guidance to researchers, traffic operators, and lawmakers to model, simulate, and evaluate AV and CAV on highways.