Driving behaviour models enabling the simulation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems: revisiting the Action Point paradigm

In the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), one of the most promising sub-functions is that of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Development of an effective ADAS, and one that is able to gain drivers’ acceptance, hinges on the development of a human-like car-following model, and this is particularly important in order to ensure the driver is always ‘in the (vehicle control) loop’ and is able to recover control safely in any situation where the ADAS may release control. One of the most commonly used models of car-following is that of the Action Point (AP) (psychophysical) paradigm. However, while this is widely used in both micro-simulation models and behavioural research, the approach is not without its weaknesses. One of these, the potential redundancy of some of the identified APs, is examined in this paper and its basic structure validated using microscopic driving behaviour collected on thirteen subjects in Italy. Another weakness in practical application of the Action Point theory is the identification of appropriate thresholds, accounting for the perception, reaction and adjustment of relative speed (or spacing) from the leading vehicle. This article shows that this identification is problematic if the Action Point paradigm is analysed in a traditional way (car-following spirals), while it is easier if the phenomenon is analysed in terms of car-following ‘waves’, related to Time To Collision (TTC) or the inverse of TTC. Within this new interpretative framework, the observed action points can be observed to follow a characteristically linear pattern. The identification of the most significant variables to be taken into account, and their characterisation by means of a simple linear pattern, allows for the formulation of more efficient real-time applications, thereby contributing to the development and diffusion of emerging on-board technologies in the field of vehicle control and driver’s assistance.     

A simple nonparametric car-following model driven by field data

Car-following models are always of great interest of traffic engineers and researchers. In the age of mass data, this paper proposes a nonparametric car-following model driven by field data. Different from most of the existing car-following models, neither driver’s behaviour parameters nor fundamental diagrams are assumed in the data-driven model. The model is proposed based on the simple k-nearest neighbour, which outputs the average of the most similar cases, i.e., the most likely driving behaviour under the current circumstance. The inputs and outputs are selected, and the determination of the only parameter k is introduced. Three simulation scenarios are conducted to test the model. The first scenario is to simulate platoons following real leaders, where traffic waves with constant speed and the detailed trajectories are observed to be consistent with the empirical data. Driver’s rubbernecking behaviour and driving errors are simulated in the second and third scenarios, respectively. The time–space diagrams of the simulated trajectories are presented and explicitly analysed. It is demonstrated that the model is able to well replicate periodic traffic oscillations from the precursor stage to the decay stage. Without making any assumption, the fundamental diagrams for the simulated scenario coincide with the empirical fundamental diagrams. These all validate that the model can well reproduce the traffic characteristics contained by the field data. The nonparametric car-following model exhibits traffic dynamics in a simple and parsimonious manner.     

A rule-based neural network approach to model driver naturalistic behavior in traffic

This paper proposes a rule-based neural network model to simulate driver behavior in terms of longitudinal and lateral actions in two driving situations, namely car-following situation and safety critical events. A fuzzy rule based neural network is constructed to obtain driver individual driving rules from their vehicle trajectory data. A machine learning method reinforcement learning is used to train the neural network such that the neural network can mimic driving behavior of individual drivers. Vehicle actions by neural network are compared to actions from naturalistic data. Furthermore, this paper applies the proposed method to analyze the heterogeneities of driving behavior from different drivers’ data.Driving data in the two driving situations are extracted from Naturalistic Truck Driving Study and Naturalistic Car Driving Study databases provided by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute according to pre-defined criteria. Driving actions were recorded in instrumented vehicles that have been equipped with specialized sensing, processing, and recording equipment.     

Modeling car-following behavior on urban expressways in Shanghai: A naturalistic driving study

Although car-following behavior is the core component of microscopic traffic simulation, intelligent transportation systems, and advanced driver assistance systems, the adequacy of the existing car-following models for Chinese drivers has not been investigated with real-world data yet. To address this gap, five representative car-following models were calibrated and evaluated for Shanghai drivers, using 2100 urban-expressway car-following periods extracted from the 161,055 km of driving data collected in the Shanghai Naturalistic Driving Study (SH-NDS). The models were calibrated for each of the 42 subject drivers, and their capabilities of predicting the drivers’ car-following behavior were evaluated.The results show that the intelligent driver model (IDM) has good transferability to model traffic situations not presented in calibration, and it performs best among the evaluated models. Compared to the Wiedemann 99 model used by VISSIM®, the IDM is easier to calibrate and demonstrates a better and more stable performance. These advantages justify its suitability for microscopic traffic simulation tools in Shanghai and likely in other regions of China. Additionally, considerable behavioral differences among different drivers were found, which demonstrates a need for archetypes of a variety of drivers to build a traffic mix in simulation. By comparing calibrated and observed values of the IDM parameters, this study found that (1) interpretable calibrated model parameters are linked with corresponding observable parameters in real world, but they are not necessarily numerically equivalent; and (2) parameters that can be measured in reality also need to be calibrated if better trajectory reproducing capability are to be achieved.     

A car-following model considering asymmetric driving behavior based on long short-term memory neural networks

Asymmetric driving behavior is a critical characteristic of human driving behaviors and has a significant impact on traffic flow. In consideration of the asymmetric driving behavior, this paper proposes a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks (NN) based car-following (CF) model to capture realistic traffic flow characteristics by incorporating the driving memory. The NGSIM data are used to calibrate and validate the proposed CF model. Meanwhile, three characteristics closely related to the asymmetric driving behavior are investigated: hysteresis, discrete driving, and intensity difference. The simulation results show the good performance of the proposed CF model on reproducing realistic traffic flow features. Moreover, to further demonstrate the superiority of the proposed CF model, two other CF models including recurrent neural network based CF model and asymmetric full velocity difference model, are compared with LSTM-NN model. The results reveal that LSTM-NN model can capture the asymmetric driving behavior well and outperforms other models.     

Experimental study and modeling of car-following behavior under high speed situation

To investigate the car-following behavior under high speed driving conditions, we performed a set of 11-car-platoon experiments on Hefei airport highway. The formation and growth of oscillations have been analyzed and compared with that in low speed situations. It was found that there is considerable heterogeneity for the same driver over different runs of the experiment. This intra-driver heterogeneity was quantitatively depicted by a new index and incorporated in an enhanced two-dimensional intelligent driver model. Using both the new high-speed and the previous low-speed experimental data, the new and three existing models were calibrated. Simulation results show that the enhanced model outperforms the three existing car-following models that do not take into account this intra-driver heterogeneity in reproducing the essential features of the traffic in the experiments.     

On some experimental features of car-following behavior and how to model them

We have carried out car-following experiments with a 25-car-platoon on an open road section to study the relation between a car’s speed and its spacing under various traffic conditions, in the hope to resolve a controversy surrounding this fundamental relation of vehicular traffic. In this paper we extend our previous analysis of these experiments, and report new experimental findings. In particular, we reveal that the platoon length (hence the average spacing within a platoon) might be significantly different even if the average velocity of the platoon is essentially the same. The findings further demonstrate that the traffic states span a 2D region in the speed-spacing (or density) plane. The common practice of using a single speed-spacing curve to model vehicular traffic ignores the variability and imprecision of human driving and is therefore inadequate. We have proposed a car-following model based on a mechanism that in certain ranges of speed and spacing, drivers are insensitive to the changes in spacing when the velocity differences between cars are small. It was shown that the model can reproduce the experimental results well.     

Freeway traffic oscillations: Microscopic analysis of formations and propagations using Wavelet Transform

In this paper we identify the origins of stop-and-go (or slow-and-go) driving and measure microscopic features of their propagations by analyzing vehicle trajectories via Wavelet Transform. Based on 53 oscillation cases analyzed, we find that oscillations can be originated by either lane-changing maneuvers (LCMs) or car-following (CF) behavior. LCMs were predominantly responsible for oscillation formations in the absence of considerable horizontal or vertical curves, whereas oscillations formed spontaneously near roadside work on an uphill segment. Regardless of the trigger, the features of oscillation propagations were similar in terms of propagation speed, oscillation duration, and amplitude. All observed cases initially exhibited a precursor phase, in which slow-and-go motions were localized. Some of them eventually transitioned into a well-developed phase, in which oscillations propagated upstream in queue. LCMs were primarily responsible for the transition, although some transitions occurred without LCMs. Our findings also suggest that an oscillation has a regressive effect on car-following behavior: a deceleration wave of an oscillation affects a timid driver (characterized by larger response time and/or minimum spacing) to become less timid and an aggressive driver less aggressive, although this change may be short-lived. An extended framework of Newell’s CF model is able to describe the regressive effect with two additional parameters with reasonable accuracy, as verified using vehicle trajectory data.     

Calibration of nonlinear car-following laws for traffic oscillation prediction

Frequency-domain analysis has been successfully used to (i) predict the amplification of traffic oscillations along a platoon of vehicles with nonlinear car-following laws and (ii) measure traffic oscillation properties (e.g., periodicity, magnitude) from field data. This paper proposes a new method to calibrate nonlinear car-following laws based on real-world vehicle trajectories, such that oscillation prediction (based on the calibrated car-following laws) and measurement from the same data can be compared and validated. This calibration method, for the first time, takes into account not only the driver’s car-following behavior but also the vehicle trajectory’s time-domain (e.g., location, speed) and frequency-domain properties (e.g., peak oscillation amplitude). We use Newell’s car-following model (1961) as an example and calibrate its parameters based on a penalty-based maximum likelihood estimation procedure. A series of experiments using Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) data are conducted to illustrate the applicability and performance of the proposed approach. Results show that the calibrated car-following models are able to simultaneously reproduce observed driver behavior, time-domain trajectories, and oscillation propagation along the platoon with reasonable accuracy.     

Online calibration for microscopic traffic simulation and dynamic multi-step prediction of traffic speed

Simulating driving behavior in high accuracy allows short-term prediction of traffic parameters, such as speeds and travel times, which are basic components of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS). Models with static parameters are often unable to respond to varying traffic conditions and simulate effectively the corresponding driving behavior. It has therefore been widely accepted that the model parameters vary in multiple dimensions, including across individual drivers, but also spatially across the network and temporally. While typically on-line, predictive models are macroscopic or mesoscopic, due to computational and data considerations, nowadays microscopic models are becoming increasingly practical for dynamic applications. In this research, we develop a methodology for online calibration of microscopic traffic simulation models for dynamic multi-step prediction of traffic measures, and apply it to car-following models, one of the key models in microscopic traffic simulation models. The methodology is illustrated using real trajectory data available from an experiment conducted in Naples, using a well-established car-following model. The performance of the application with the dynamic model parameters consistently outperforms the corresponding static calibrated model in all cases, and leads to less than 10% error in speed prediction even for ten steps into the future, in all considered data-sets.     

Formal characterization of an efficient driving evaluation process for companies of the transport sector

Public institutions and private companies all around the world agree that road transport is one of the main sectors responsible for global warming. With this in mind, all of them have designed actions to increase efficiency and reduce fuel consumption and emissions. A favorite for the companies is eco-driving because it can improve the fleet performance without a great investment. However, although these programs have achieved promising results in the majority of the experiences, the figures are not so encouraging in the long term. In many cases this decrease is produced by fuzzy reward programs or the total lack of them. Nevertheless, any coherent reward program, in order to be effective, must be associated with a complete and fair evaluation process which takes into account all the different aspects and complexities related with driving. In this paper, we propose a formal characterization of an efficient driving evaluation process which starts with a review of many different driving recommendation systems. These recommendations are used as seeds to build a set of formal competences that any eco driver must have, as well as the learning outcomes associated with each competence. A set of patterns of driving behaviors are defined, that allow confirming any of the learning outcomes. The definition also comprises a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each learning outcome. These KPIs allow measuring the progress associated with each competence. Finally, we also propose some relevant differences that must be taken into account for the goals associated with each KPI, depending on the domain of application: type and road geometry, vehicle type (automatic or manual, passengers, cargo or not, public or private), amount of traffic, weather. Some examples of this driver characterization have been included to demonstrate the process.     

Towards data-driven car-following models

Car following models have been studied with many diverse approaches for decades. Nowadays, technological advances have significantly improved our traffic data collection capabilities. Conventional car following models rely on mathematical formulas and are derived from traffic flow theory; a property that often makes them more restrictive. On the other hand, data-driven approaches are more flexible and allow the incorporation of additional information to the model; however, they may not provide as much insight into traffic flow theory as the traditional models. In this research, an innovative methodological framework based on a data-driven approach is proposed for the estimation of car-following models, suitable for incorporation into microscopic traffic simulation models. An existing technique, i.e. locally weighted regression (loess), is defined through an optimization problem and is employed in a novel way. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using data collected from a sequence of instrumented vehicles in Naples, Italy. Gipps’ model, one of the most extensively used car-following models, is calibrated against the same data and used as a reference benchmark. Optimization issues are raised in both cases. The obtained results suggest that data-driven car-following models could be a promising research direction.     

A pattern recognition algorithm for assessing trajectory completeness

Vehicular trajectories are widely used for car-following (CF) model calibration and validation, as they embody characteristics of individual driving behaviour (each trajectory reflects an individual driver). Previous studies have highlighted that the trajectories should contain all the major vehicular interactions (driving regimes) between the leader and the follower for reliable CF model calibration and validation. Based on Dynamic Time Warping and Bottom-Up algorithms, this paper develops a pattern recognition algorithm for vehicle trajectories (PRAVT) to objectively, accurately, and automatically differentiate different driving regimes in a trajectory and then select the most complete trajectories (i.e. trajectories containing a maximum number of regimes). PRAVT is rigorously tested using synthetic data and then applied to the NGSIM data. We have observed that the NGSIM data are dominated by the trajectories which contain only three regimes, namely acceleration, deceleration, and following, 77% of the trajectories lack the standstill regime, and no trajectory in the NGSIM data is complete. These findings’ impact on how to properly utilize NGSIM data can be profound. Given the extensive use of the NGSIM data in the traffic flow community, this paper also provides insights about the types of regimes contained in each trajectory of the NGSIM data.     

A control theoretic formulation of green driving strategies based on inter-vehicle communications

Various green driving strategies have been proposed to smooth traffic flow and lower pollutant emissions and fuel consumption in stop-and-go traffic. In this paper, we present a control theoretic formulation of distributed, cooperative green driving strategies based on inter-vehicle communications (IVCs). The control variable is the advisory speed limit, which is designed to smooth a following vehicle’s speed profile without changing its average speed. We theoretically analyze the performance of a constant independent and three simple cooperative green driving strategies and present three rules for effective and robust strategies. We then develop a distributed cooperative green driving strategy, in which the advisory speed limit is first independently calculated by each individual vehicle and then averaged among green driving vehicles through IVC. By simulations with Newell’s car-following model and the Comprehensive Modal Emissions Model (CMEM), we demonstrate that such a strategy is effective and robust independently as well as cooperatively for different market penetration rates of IVC-equipped vehicles and communication delays. In particular, even when 5% of the vehicles implement the green driving strategy and the IVC communication delay is 60 s, the fuel consumption can be reduced by up to 15%. Finally we discuss some future extensions.     

Utilizing naturalistic driving data for in-depth analysis of driver lane-keeping behavior in rain: Non-parametric MARS and parametric logistic regression modeling approaches

It is known that adverse weather conditions can affect driver performance due to reduction in visibility and slippery surface conditions. Lane keeping is one of the main factors that might be affected by weather conditions. Most of the previous studies on lane keeping have investigated driver lane-keeping performance from driver inattention perspective. In addition, the majority of previous lane-keeping studies have been conducted in controlled environments such as driving simulators. Therefore, there is a lack of studies that investigate driver lane-keeping ability considering adverse weather conditions in naturalistic settings. In this study, the relationship between weather conditions and driver lane-keeping performance was investigated using the SHRP2 naturalistic driving data for 141 drivers between 19 and 89 years of age. Moreover, a threshold was introduced to differentiate lane keeping and lane changing in naturalistic driving data. Two lane-keeping models were developed using the logistic regression and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) to better understand factors affecting driver lane-keeping ability considering adverse weather conditions. The results revealed that heavy rain can significantly increase the standard deviation of lane position (SDLP), which is a very widely used method for analyzing lane-keeping ability. It was also found that traffic conditions, driver age and experience, and posted speed limits have significant effects on driver lane-keeping ability. An interesting finding of this study is that drivers have a better lane-keeping ability in roadways with higher posted speed limits. The results from this study might provide better insights into understanding the complex effect of adverse weather conditions on driver behavior.     

Method for investigating intradriver heterogeneity using vehicle trajectory data: A Dynamic Time Warping approach

After first extending Newell’s car-following model to incorporate time-dependent parameters, this paper describes the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm and its application for calibrating this microscopic simulation model by synthesizing driver trajectory data. Using the unique capabilities of the DTW algorithm, this paper attempts to examine driver heterogeneity in car-following behavior, as well as the driver’s heterogeneous situation-dependent behavior within a trip, based on the calibrated time-varying response times and critical jam spacing. The standard DTW algorithm is enhanced to address a number of estimation challenges in this specific application, and a numerical experiment is presented with vehicle trajectory data extracted from the Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) project for demonstration purposes. The DTW algorithm is shown to be a reasonable method for processing large vehicle trajectory datasets, but requires significant data reduction to produce reasonable results when working with high resolution vehicle trajectory data. Additionally, singularities present an interesting match solution set to potentially help identify changing driver behavior; however, they must be avoided to reduce analysis complexity.     

Evaluation of the General Motors based car-following models and a proposed fuzzy inference model

This paper evaluates the properties of the General Motors (GM) based car-following models, identifies their characteristics, and proposes a fuzzy inference logic based model that can overcome some of the shortcomings of the GM based models. This process involves developing a framework for evaluating a car-following model and comparing the behavior predicted by the GM models with the behavior observed under the real world situation. For this purpose, an instrumented vehicle was used to collect data on the headway and speeds of two consecutive vehicles under actual traffic conditions. Shortcomings of the existing GM based models are identified, in particular, the stability conditions were analyzed in detail. A fuzzy-inference based model of car-following is developed to represent the approximate nature of stimulus–response process during driving. This model is evaluated using the same evaluation framework used for the GM models and the data obtained by the instrumented test vehicle. Comparison between the performance of the two models show that the proposed fuzzy inference model can overcome many shortcomings of the GM based car-following models, and can be useful for developing the algorithm for the adaptive cruise control for automated highway system (AHS).     

Optimization of Wiedemann and Fritzsche car-following models for emission estimation

Recent studies have provided that the vehicle trajectories generated by car-following models may not represent the real driving characteristics, thus leading to significant emission estimation errors. In this paper, two of the most widely used car-following models, Wiedemann and Fritzsche models, were selected and analyzed based on the massive field car-following trajectories in Beijing. A numerical simulation method was designed to generate the following car’s trajectories by using the field trajectories as the input. By comparing the simulated and the filed data, the representativeness of the simulated regime fractions and VSP distributions were evaluated. Then, the mechanism of car-following models was investigated from the aspects of regime determination and the acceleration rule in each regime. Further, the regime threshold parameters and acceleration model were optimized for emission estimations. This study found that the “Following” regime threshold of SDX and the maximum acceleration in “Free Driving” regime are critical parameters for Wiedemann model. The differences between the Wiedemann simulated VSP distribution and the field one can be reduced separately by applying the optimized SDX and maximum acceleration model individually. However, a much sharper reduction was observed by optimizing both parameters simultaneously, and the emission estimation errors were further reduced, which were less than 4% in the case studies. Fritzsche model generated more realistic VSP distributions and emissions, while the maximum accelerations could be further optimized for high speed conditions.     

Exploring the impact of connected and autonomous vehicles on freeway capacity using a revised Intelligent Driver Model

ABSTRACT

Connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technologies are expected to change driving/vehicle behavior on freeways. This study investigates the impact of CAVs on freeway capacity using a microsimulation tool. A four-lane basic freeway segment is selected as the case study through the Caltrans Performance Measurement System (PeMS). To obtain valid results, various driving behavior parameters are calibrated to the real traffic conditions for human-driven vehicles. In particular, the calibration is conducted using genetic algorithm. A revised Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) is developed and used as the car-following model for CAVs. The simulation is conducted on the basic freeway segment under different penetration rates of CAVs and different freeway speed limits. The results show that with an increase in the market penetration rate, freeway capacity increases, and will increase significantly as the speed limit increases.