Aggregating mobile object trajectories: cumulative time geographic density estimation for GPS data

We present new approaches that expand upon the time geographic density estimation (TGDE) framework previously employed to estimate potential path trees. In the past, TGDE metrics have identified possible locations an individual moving object may have passed between, given known origin and destination points. This paper utilizes a new form of TGDE to investigate taxicab GPS traces over a specified time horizon with position ‘gaps’. To this end, we propose a new extension to the TGDE framework, TGDE-C, which is used to determine the cumulative TGDE values for a group of GPS traces, at a given location. These metrics are applied to multiple taxis and allow for time of day analysis. Additionally, we combine these new extensions with existing TGDE metrics that allow us to determine how accessible individual or groups of vehicles are to urban opportunities.     

路侧公交专用车道模式下右转交织长度建模

在设置路侧公交专用道的交叉口处,可通过划定交织区的方式允许右转车辆借用一定长度的公交专用道通行.合理规划公交车与右转车的交织区长度有利于提高借道右转的通行效率,减少在交织区前的排队车辆数从而降低道路混乱程度,保障公交车的专用路权.本文分析了公交站点影响下的公交车车头时距分布,建立了右转车穿越交织区长度计算模型,并结合实际调查数据进行了算例分析和模型验证.研究成果可为公交优先条件下的交叉口空间优化设计提供理论参考.     

基于LSTM的舰船运动姿态短期预测

舰船的六自由度运动状态形成复杂的非线性过程,运动姿态会受到耦合作用、不定周期、噪声信号以及混沌特性等因素的干扰,因此很难得到精确的预测结果.为了提升舰船运动姿态的预测精度,利用舰船时间序列的特点,建立了基于长短期记忆单元(LSTM)模型,对其进行了舰船姿态预测仿真,将结果与时间序列分析法的结果进行对比.实例分析表明:基于LSTM模型的预测方法具有精确度高、易实现的特点.这为舰船运动短期预测提供了一个新的思路和方法.     

Autonomous cars: The tension between occupant experience and intersection capacity

Systems that enable high levels of vehicle-automation are now beginning to enter the commercial marketplace. Road vehicles capable of operating independently of real-time human control under an increasing set of circumstances will likely become more widely available in the near future. Such vehicles are expected to bring a variety of benefits. Two such anticipated advantages (relative to human-driver vehicle control) are said to be increased road network capacity and the freeing up of the driver-occupant’s time to engage in their choice of leisurely or economically-productive (non-driving) tasks.In this study we investigate the implications for intersection capacity and level-of-service of providing occupants of automated (without real-time human control), autonomously-operating (without vehicle-to-X communication) cars with ride quality that is equivalent (in terms of maximum rates of longitudinal and lateral acceleration) to two types of rail systems: [urban] light rail transit and [inter-urban] high-speed rail. The literature suggests that car passengers start experiencing discomfort at lower rates of acceleration than car drivers; it is therefore plausible that occupants of an autonomously-operating vehicle may wish to instruct their vehicle to maneuver in a way that provides them greater ride comfort than if the vehicle-control algorithm simply mimicked human-driving-operation.On the basis of traffic microsimulation analysis, we found that restricting the dynamics of autonomous cars to the acceleration/deceleration characteristics of both rail systems leads to reductions in a signalized intersection’s vehicle-processing capacity and increases in delay. The impacts were found to be larger when constraining the autonomous cars’ dynamics to the more-restrictive acceleration/deceleration profile of high-speed rail. The scenarios we analyzed must be viewed as boundary conditions, because autonomous cars’ dynamics were by definition never allowed to exceed the acceleration/deceleration constraints of the rail systems. Appropriate evidence regarding motorists’ preferences does not exist at present; establishing these preferences is an important item for the future research agenda.This paper concludes with a brief discussion of research needs to advance this line of inquiry.     

A stochastic model of traffic flow: Theoretical foundations

In a variety of applications of traffic flow, including traffic simulation, real-time estimation and prediction, one requires a probabilistic model of traffic flow. The usual approach to constructing such models involves the addition of random noise terms to deterministic equations, which could lead to negative traffic densities and mean dynamics that are inconsistent with the original deterministic dynamics. This paper offers a new stochastic model of traffic flow that addresses these issues. The source of randomness in the proposed model is the uncertainty inherent in driver gap choice, which is represented by random state dependent vehicle time headways. A wide range of time headway distributions is allowed. From the random time headways, counting processes are defined, which represent cumulative flows across cell boundaries in a discrete space and continuous time conservation framework. We show that our construction implicitly ensures non-negativity of traffic densities and that the fluid limit of the stochastic model is consistent with cell transmission model (CTM) based deterministic dynamics.     

动态载荷识别的自适应延迟逆模型方法

为减小载荷识别问题对原系统先验知识的依赖,采用系统的自适应延迟逆模型识别时域载荷。采用自适应算法辨识延迟逆模型,代替了一般识别方法中的系统特性矩阵求逆过程,避免了病态问题。随后将工作状态下的响应作为逆模型的输入,则其输出就是时域载荷的延迟估计。通过对两端简支梁结构进行载荷识别的仿真研究,以及对双层隔振试验台架的试验研究,识别了稳态激励和瞬态激励,验证了该方法的有效性。该方法不需要了解系统的数学模型及参数,因此能够应用于工程实践中。     

Travel time estimation from sparse floating car data with consistent path inference: A fixed point approach

Estimation of urban network link travel times from sparse floating car data (FCD) usually needs pre-processing, mainly map-matching and path inference for finding the most likely vehicle paths that are consistent with reported locations. Path inference requires a priori assumptions about link travel times; using unrealistic initial link travel times can bias the travel time estimation and subsequent identification of shortest paths. Thus, the combination of path inference and travel time estimation is a joint problem. This paper investigates the sensitivity of estimated travel times, and proposes a fixed point formulation of the simultaneous path inference and travel time estimation problem. The methodology is applied in a case study to estimate travel times from taxi FCD in Stockholm, Sweden. The results show that standard fixed point iterations converge quickly to a solution where input and output travel times are consistent. The solution is robust under different initial travel times assumptions and data sizes. Validation against actual path travel time measurements from the Google API and an instrumented vehicle deployed for this purpose shows that the fixed point algorithm improves shortest path finding. The results highlight the importance of the joint solution of the path inference and travel time estimation problem, in particular for accurate path finding and route optimization.     

个体对通勤时间的态度和偏好视角下的职住空间失调

研究职住空间失调能够帮助我们更好地理解个体对职住分离的态度和偏好,并有助于在制定政策时考虑通勤者更真实的需求和期望.本次研究采用理想通勤时间和实际通勤时间的匹配程度来度量职住空间失调,并以昆明市为案例进行了实证研究.描述性统计结果表明,大多数通勤者认为他们的职住空间是失调的,有41.04%的通勤者遭受重度空间失调.进一步,基于序次Logistic回归模型分析了职住空间失调的影响因素.结果表明,出行方式、居住区位、年龄、受教育程度和家庭有无小孩对职住空间失调有显著影响.同时,由于个体对通勤时间的态度和偏好的异质性,更长的通勤时间并不总是意味着职住空间更加失调.     

A copula-based approach for estimating the travel time reliability of urban arterial

Estimating the travel time reliability (TTR) of urban arterial is critical for real-time and reliable route guidance and provides theoretical bases and technical support for sophisticated traffic management and control. The state-of-art procedures for arterial TTR estimation usually assume that path travel time follows a certain distribution, with less consideration about segment correlations. However, the conventional approach is usually unrealistic because an important feature of urban arterial is the dependent structure of travel times on continuous segments. In this study, a copula-based approach that incorporates the stochastic characteristics of segments travel time is proposed to model arterial travel time distribution (TTD), which serves as a basis for TTR quantification. First, segments correlation is empirically analyzed and different types of copula models are examined. Then, fitting marginal distributions for segment TTD is conducted by parametric and non-parametric regression analysis, respectively. Based on the estimated parameters of the models, the best-fitting copula is determined in terms of the goodness-of-fit tests. Last, the model is examined at two study sites with AVI data and NGSIM trajectory data, respectively. The results of path TTD estimation demonstrate the advantage of the proposed copula-based approach, compared with the convolution model without capturing segments correlation and the empirical distribution fitting methods. Furthermore, when considering the segments correlation effect, it was found that the estimated path TTR is more accurate than that by the convolution model.     

Mental models of driving and speed: biases,choices and reality

This paper provides a review of research performed by Svenson with colleagues and others work on mental models and their practical implications. Mental models describe how people perceive and think about the world including covariances and relationships between different variables, such as driving speed and time. Research on mental models has detected the time-saving bias [Svenson, O. (1970). A functional measurement approach to intuitive estimation as exemplified by estimated time savings. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 86, 204–210]. It means that drivers relatively overestimate the time that can be saved by increasing speed from an already high speed, for example, 90–130?km/h, and underestimate the time that can be saved by increasing speed from a low speed, for example, 30–45?km/h. In congruence with this finding, mean speed judgments and perceptions of mean speeds are also biased and higher speeds given too much weight and low speeds too little weight in comparison with objective reality. Replacing or adding a new speedometer in the car showing min per km eliminated or weakened the time-saving bias. Information about braking distances at different speeds did not improve overoptimistic judgments of braking capacity, but information about collision speed with an object suddenly appearing on the road did improve judgments of braking capacity. This is relevant to drivers, politicians and traffic regulators.