Modeling

Modeling, Monitoring, and Controlling Road Traffic Using Vehicles to Sense and Act

Monache, Maria Laura Delle
McQuade, Sean T.
Matin, Hossein Nick Zinat
Gloudemans, Derek A.
Wang, Yanbing
Gunter, George L.
Bayen, Alexandre M.
Lee, Jonathan W.
Piccoli, Benedetto
Seibold, Benjamin
Sprinkle, Jonathan M.
Work, Daniel B.
2025

This review offers a comprehensive overview of current traffic modeling, estimation, and control methods, along with resulting field experiments. It highlights key developments and future directions in leveraging technological advancements to improve traffic management and safety. The focus is on macroscopic, microscopic, and micro-macro models, as well as state-of-the-art control techniques and estimation methods for deploying vehicles in traffic field experiments.

Reevaluating Policy Gradient Methods for Imperfect-Information Games

Rudolph, Max
Lichtle, Nathan
Mohammadpour, Sobhan
Bayen, Alexandre
Kolter, J. Zico
Zhang, Amy
Farina, Gabriele
Vinitsky, Eugene
Sokota, Samuel
2025

In the past decade, motivated by the putative failure of naive self-play deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in adversarial imperfect-information games, researchers have developed numerous DRL algorithms based on fictitious play (FP), double oracle (DO), and counterfactual regret minimization (CFR). In light of recent results of the magnetic mirror descent algorithm, we hypothesize that simpler generic policy gradient methods like PPO are competitive with or superior to these FP, DO, and CFR-based DRL approaches. To facilitate the resolution of this hypothesis, we implement and release the...

Validation and Calibration of Energy Models with Real Vehicle Data from Chassis Dynamometer Experiments

Carpio, Joy
Almatrudi, Sulaiman
Khoudari, Nour
Fu, Zhe
Butts, Kenneth
Lee, Jonathan
Seibold, Benjamin
Bayen, Alexandre
2025

Accurate estimation of vehicle fuel consumption typically requires detailed modeling of complex internal powertrain dynamics, often resulting in computationally intensive simulations. However, many transportation applications-such as traffic flow modeling, optimization, and control-require simplified models that are fast, interpretable, and easy to implement, while still maintaining fidelity to physical energy behavior. This work builds upon a recently developed model reduction pipeline that derives physics-like energy models from high-fidelity Autonomie vehicle simulations. These reduced...

Evaluating the Capacity of Freeway Weaving Sections

Wang, Mu-han
Cassidy, Michael J.
Chan, Patrick
May, Adolf D.
1993

The research described in this paper employed simulation modeling and empirical observations in an effort to: (1) Identify the traffic flow phenomena that characterize freeway weaving section capacity; and (2) determine appropriate traffic flow rate values that reflect weaving section capacity. The INTRAS microscopic simulation model was calibrated and validated using empirical data collected at a weaving site. Increasing traffic demands were then sequentially input into repeated simulation runs to identify the boundary between uncongested and congested operation. Where a weaving...

An Electronic Surveillance and Control System for Traffic Management on the Borman Expressway. Part II, Calibrating a Simulation Model

Wang, Mu-Han
Cassidy, Michael J.
1995

This report presents a project whose purpose was to calibrate a freeway simulation model to emulate traffic operating conditions on the Borman Expressway. The computer simulation model can then be used to predict impacts created by a host of possible conditions including incident occurrences, maintenance, reconstruction and the deployment of various freeway control and management strategies. The results of the simulation model can be used as a decision-making tool for adopting suitable policies to address operating needs.

Application of Ordered Probit Techniques to Analyze Ratings of Blissymbol Complexity

Soto, Gloria
Cassidy, Michael
Madanat, Samer
1996

This paper explores the application of ordered probit modeling, an econometric technique commonly used for the analysis of rating data in situations when respondents are asked to rate items (e.g., an object, service, or product), one at a time. To demonstrate the application of this methodology, an existing data set, originally collected to measure the perceived complexities for an array of Blissymbols, was used. Findings from the use of the ordered probit model are compared with those resulting from the earlier research that used regression procedures. Results from the use of ordered...

Middleware for Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems

Manasseh, Christian
Sengupta, Raja
2008

Middleware has emerged as an important architectural component in supporting distributed applications. The role of middleware is to present a unified programming model to application writers and to mask out problems of heterogeneity and distribution. Mobile sensors fall into the space of distributed systems that suffer from isolated data sources, heterogeneous communication infrastructure and varying application requirements. In this report, we provide a middleware architecture that addresses the needs of a distributed system made of mobile sensors in general and discuss the implementation...

Modeling The Santa Monica Freeway Corridor: A Feasibility Study

Skabardonis, Alexander
Dahlgren, Joy
May, Adolf D.
1998

This report presents the findings of a feasibility study which developed a simulation testbed for the Santa Monica freeway corridor. The study involved performing an evaluation of the state-of-the-art models for Advanced Traffic Management and Traffic Information Systems (ATMIS) on freeway corridors. The evaluation was based on the model capabilities, input data requirements and output options, with focus on the record of real-life calibration, validation and practical application of the models. The findings show that the CORSIM and INTEGRATION models have the higher probability of...

Exploring Alternative Service Schemes for Busy Transit Corridors

Gu, Weihua
Amini, Zahra
Cassidy, Michael J.
2016

Transit systems in which buses or trains always visit each and every stop along corridors are compared against those that feature two alternative vehicle-dispatching schemes. The alternatives entail so-called skip-stop and express/local services. Continuous models found in the literature are expanded so that the alternatives could be compared under a wider array of options. Comparisons are separately drawn for systems that feature buses, BRT and metro-rail trains, both for cities that are wealthy and for those that are not. Idealizations in regard to travel demand and route symmetry are...

Traffic Modeling To Evaluate Potential Benefits Of Advanced Traffic Management And In-vehicle Information Systems In A Freeway/Arterial Corridor

Gardes, Yonnel
1990

This study includes a literature review of existing traffic simulation models potentially suited for evaluating advanced traffic control strategies and in-vehicle information systems within an integrated freeway/ arterial corridor. Chapter 1 presents a literature review and identification of candidate models. Chapter 2 contains a preliminary screening of candidate models. Chapter 3 presents an in-depth evaluation of short list of models. And, Chapter 4 gives conclusions of the research and recommendations for future directions.