The Impact of Travel Time Information on Travelers’ Learning under Uncertainty

In this work, laboratory experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the effect of feedback on decision-making under uncertainty, with and without provided information about travel times. We discuss the prediction of travelers’ response to uncertainty in two route–choice situations. In the first situation travelers are faced with a route–choice problem in which travel times are uncertain but some external information about routes’ travel times is provided. The second situation takes place in a more uncertain environment in which external information about travel times is not provided, and the travelers’ only source of information is their own experience. Experimental results are in conflict with the paradigm about traveler information systems: As a consequence of information, the propensity of travelers to minimize expected travel time is not necessarily increased. Providing travelers with static information about expected travel times reveals an increase in the heterogeneity of travelers’ choices and reduces the maximization rate.     

Towards a generic benchmarking platform for origin–destination flows estimation/updating algorithms: Design,demonstration and validation

Estimation/updating of Origin–Destination (OD) flows and other traffic state parameters is a classical, widely adopted procedure in transport engineering, both in off-line and in on-line contexts. Notwithstanding numerous approaches proposed in the literature, there is still room for considerable improvements, also leveraging the unprecedented opportunity offered by information and communication technologies and big data. A key issue relates to the unobservability of OD flows in real networks – except from closed highway systems – thus leading to inherent difficulties in measuring performance of OD flows estimation/updating methods and algorithms. Starting from these premises, the paper proposes a common evaluation and benchmarking framework, providing a synthetic test bed, which enables implementation and comparison of OD estimation/updating algorithms and methodologies under “standardized” conditions. The framework, implemented in a platform available to interested parties upon request, has been flexibly designed and allows comparing a variety of approaches under various settings and conditions. Specifically, the structure and the key features of the framework are presented, along with a detailed experimental design for the application of different dynamic OD flow estimation algorithms. By way of example, applications to both off-line/planning and on-line algorithms are presented, together with a demonstration of the extensibility of the presented framework to accommodate additional data sources.     

Real-time traffic state estimation in urban corridors from heterogeneous data

In recent years, rapid advances in information technology have led to various data collection systems which are enriching the sources of empirical data for use in transport systems. Currently, traffic data are collected through various sensors including loop detectors, probe vehicles, cell-phones, Bluetooth, video cameras, remote sensing and public transport smart cards. It has been argued that combining the complementary information from multiple sources will generally result in better accuracy, increased robustness and reduced ambiguity. Despite the fact that there have been substantial advances in data assimilation techniques to reconstruct and predict the traffic state from multiple data sources, such methods are generally data-driven and do not fully utilize the power of traffic models. Furthermore, the existing methods are still limited to freeway networks and are not yet applicable in the urban context due to the enhanced complexity of the flow behavior. The main traffic phenomena on urban links are generally caused by the boundary conditions at intersections, un-signalized or signalized, at which the switching of the traffic lights and the turning maneuvers of the road users lead to shock-wave phenomena that propagate upstream of the intersections. This paper develops a new model-based methodology to build up a real-time traffic prediction model for arterial corridors using data from multiple sources, particularly from loop detectors and partial observations from Bluetooth and GPS devices.     

Estimating travel time functions for urban roads: options and issues

Travel time functions specify the relationship between the travel time on a road and the volume of traffic on the road. Until recently, the parameters of travel time functions were rarely estimated in practice; however, a compelling case can be made for the empirical examination of these functions. This paper reviews, and qualitatively evaluates, a range of options for developing a set of travel time functions. A hierarchy of travel time functions is defined based on four levels of network detail: area, corridor, route and link. This hierarchy is illustrated by considering the development of travel time functions for Adelaide. Alternative sources of data for estimating travel time functions are identified.

In general, the costs and benefits increase as the travel time functions are estimated at finer levels of network detail. The costs of developing travel time functions include data acquisition costs and analysis costs. The benefits include the potential for reducing prediction errors, the degree of application flexibility and the policy sensitivity of the travel time functions.     

城市轨道交通站点客流不确定性研究

为提高城市轨道交通站点客流预测的可靠性,在分析客流不确定性影响因素的基础上,基于ARIMA-GARCH模型,依据南京地铁珠江路站点客流数据对客流不确定性进行建模和预测,并从预测置信区间和无效覆盖率两方面与传统的时间序列进行对比分析,研究结果表明,ARIMA-GARCH能够较好地拟合客流波动情况,为城市轨道交通运营与管理提供理论依据。     

Observer-based clutch disengagement control during gear shift process of automated manual transmission

A clutch disengagement strategy is proposed for the shift control of automated manual transmissions. The control strategy is based on a drive shaft torque observer. With the estimated drive shaft torque, the clutch can be disengaged as fast as possible without large driveline oscillations, which contributes to the reduction of total shift time and shift shock. The proposed control strategy is tested on a complete powertrain simulation model. It is verified that the system is robust to the variations of driving conditions, such as vehicle mass and road grade. It is also demonstrated that the revised system with switched gain can provide satisfactory performance even under large estimation error of the engine torque.     

A model-based traction control strategy non-reliant on wheel slip information

A traction control system (TCS) for two-wheel-drive vehicles can conveniently be realised by means of slip control. Such a TCS is modified in this paper in order to be applicable to four-wheel-drive vehicles and anti-lock braking systems, where slip information is not readily available. A reference vehicle model is used to estimate the vehicle velocity. The reference model is excited by a saw-tooth signal in order to adapt the slip for maximum tyre traction performance. The model-based TCS is made robust to vehicle modelling errors by extending it with (i) a superimposed loop of tyre static curve gradient control or (ii) a robust switching controller based on a bi-directional saw-tooth excitation signal. The proposed traction control strategies are verified by experiments and computer simulations.     

Flexible long range planning using low cost information

Contemporary transport planning requires a flexible modelling approach which can be used to monitor the implementation of a long term plan checking regularly its short term performance with easily available data; the original model is periodically updated using low cost information and this allows the evaluation of the changes to the plan which may be required. Such an approach requires models suited to regular updating and to the use of data from different sources. Models to update trip matrices from traffic counts have been available for some time; however, the estimation and/or updating of other model stages with low cost data has escaped analytical treatment. The paper discusses this idea and formulates the updating problem for an example involving a joint destination/mode choice model under various assumptions about the nature of the available data. Analytical solutions are proposed as well as some general conclusions.requests for offprints     

基于深度强化学习的车辆跟驰控制

针对自适应巡航控制系统在控制主车跟驰行驶中受前车运动状态的不确定性影响问题，在分析车辆运动特点的基础上，提出一种能够考虑前车运动随机性的跟驰控制策略。搭建驾驶人实车驾驶数据采集平台，招募驾驶人进行实车跟驰道路试验，建立驾驶人真实驾驶数据库。假设车辆未来时刻的加速度决策主要受前方目标车辆运动影响，建立基于双前车跟驰结构的主车纵向控制架构。将驾驶数据库中的驾驶数据分别视作前车和前前车运动变化历程，利用高斯过程算法建立了前车纵向加速度变化随机过程模型，实现对前方目标车运动状态分布的概率性建模。将车辆跟驰问题构建为一定奖励函数下的马尔可夫决策过程，引入深度强化学习研究主车跟驰控制问题。利用近端策略优化算法建立车辆跟驰控制策略，通过与前车运动随机过程模型进行交互式迭代学习，得到具有运动不确定性跟驰环境下的主车纵向控制策略，实现对车辆纵向控制的最优决策。最后基于真实驾驶数据，对控制策略进行测试。研究结果表明：该策略建立了车辆纵向控制与主车和双前车状态之间的映射关系，在迭代学习过程中对前车运动的随机性进行考虑，跟驰控制中不需要对前车运动进行额外的概率预测，能够以较低的计算量实现主车稳定跟随前车行驶。     

Efficient multiple model particle filtering for joint traffic state estimation and incident detection

This article proposes an efficient multiple model particle filter (EMMPF) to solve the problems of traffic state estimation and incident detection, which requires significantly less computation time compared to existing multiple model nonlinear filters. To incorporate the on ramps and off ramps on the highway, junction solvers for a traffic flow model with incident dynamics are developed. The effectiveness of the proposed EMMPF is assessed using a benchmark hybrid state estimation problem, and using synthetic traffic data generated by a micro-simulation software. Then, the traffic estimation framework is implemented using field data collected on Interstate 880 in California. The results show the EMMPF is capable of estimating the traffic state and detecting incidents and requires an order of magnitude less computation time compared to existing algorithms, especially when the hybrid system has a large number of rare models.