Riccardo Scarinci

Control concepts for facilitating motorway on-ramp merging using intelligent vehicles

Abstract Congestion at motorway junctions is a traffic phenomenon that degrades operation of infrastructure and can lead to breakdown of traffic flow and associated reduction in capacity. Advanced communication technologies open new possibilities to prevent or at least delay this phenomenon, and innovative active traffic management systems have been developed in the recent years for better control of motorway traffic. This paper presents a review of control strategies for facilitating motorway on-ramp merging using intelligent vehicles. First, the concepts of the control algorithms are reviewed chronologically divided into three types of intelligent vehicle: completely automated, equipped with cooperative adaptive cruise control and equipped with on-board display. Then, a common structure is identified, and the algorithms are presented based on their characteristics in order to identify similarities, dissimilarities, trends and possible future research directions. Finally, using a similar approach, a review of the methods used to evaluate these control strategies identifies important aspects that should be considered by further research on this topic.

Analysis of Traffic Performance of a Merging Assistant Strategy Using Cooperative Vehicles

Emerging in-car communication technologies continually offer new communication capabilities between vehicles and infrastructure that, together with more accurate positioning systems, can be used to improve the use of current infrastructure. The aim of this paper is to present a novel merging assistant strategy that exploits cooperative systems to reduce congestion at motorway junctions. This new system, called Cooperative Merging Assistant, groups main carriageway vehicles together and collects the intervehicle spaces into gaps that are usable by merging traffic. These gaps will facilitate the coordinated entry of platoons of vehicles released by an on-ramp traffic signal. The performance of this new system is evaluated using microscopic simulation. Results show the reduction of late-merging vehicles, decrease in congestion and increase of merging capacity. This study shows how the use of cooperative systems can improve the merging maneuver and thus lead to a reduction of congestion on motorways.

Analysis of traffic performance of a ramp metering strategy using cooperative vehicles

Emerging in-car communication technologies continually offer new communication capabilities between vehicles and infrastructure that, together with more accurate positioning systems, can be used to improve performance of current Intelligent Transport Systems through cooperative systems. The aim of this paper is to present a novel ramp metering strategy, exploiting cooperative systems to further reduce congestion at motorway junctions. This new system, called Cooperative Ramp Metering, rearranges gaps present in motorway traffic by requesting cooperation from participating vehicles in order to facilitate the merging of platoons of vehicles released by an on-ramp traffic light. The performance of this new system have been evaluated using microscopic simulation. Results indicate the reduction of late-merging vehicles, decrease of congestion occurrence and improvement in merging capacity. This study shows how the use of new cooperative systems can improve the performance of current ramp metering and lead to a reduction of congestion on motorways.