Traffic Theory

This article develops a boundary observer for the estimation of congested freeway traffic states based on the Aw-Rascle-Zhang (ARZ) partial differential equations (PDEs) model. Traffic state estimation refers to the acquisition of traffic state information from partially observed traffic data. This problem is relevant for freeway due to its limited accessibility to real-time traffic information. We propose a model-driven approach in which the estimation of aggregated traffic states in a freeway segment is obtained simply from the boundary measurement of flow and velocity without knowledge...

This work presents an integrated framework of: vehicle dynamics models, with a particular attention to instabilities and traffic waves; vehicle energy models, with particular attention to accurate energy values for strongly unsteady driving profiles; and sparse Lagrangian controls via automated vehicles, with a focus on controls that can be executed via existing technology such as adaptive cruise control systems. This framework serves as a key building block in developing control strategies for human-in-the-loop traffic flow smoothing on real highways. In this contribution, we outline the...

We study the exact boundary controllability of a class of nonlocal conservation laws modeling traffic flow. The velocity of the macroscopic dynamics depends on a weighted average of the traffic density ahead and the averaging kernel is of exponential type. Under specific assumptions, we show that the boundary controls can be used to steer the system towards a target final state or out-flux. The regularizing effect of the nonlocal term, which leads to the uniqueness of weak solutions, enables us to prove that the exact controllability is equivalent to the existence of weak solutions to the...

Hierarchies of temporally decoupled policies present a promising approach for enabling structured exploration in complex long-term planning problems. To fully achieve this approach an end-to-end training paradigm is needed. However, training these multi-level policies has had limited success due to challenges arising from interactions between the goal-assigning and goal-achieving levels within a hierarchy. In this article, we consider the policy optimization process as a multi-agent process. This allows us to draw on connections between communication and cooperation in multi-agent RL, and...