Traffic Control

Lead: Tanja Niels, Majid Rostami, Matthias Spangler

The primary focus of this research group revolves around controlling the traffic system, including all road users and infrastructure, to enhance traffic characteristics and impacts such as traffic flow, delays, emissions, and safety. Conventional traffic control measures, such as traffic signal control in urban areas, ramp metering, and variable speed limits for freeway traffic networks, are applied to all vehicles on the road. The introduction of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) provides the opportunity to not only get more real-time and high-resolution traffic-related information but also to control individual vehicle behavior for a broader spectrum of traffic management applications. This includes automated intersection control, trajectory optimization in freeway merging zones, and cooperative lane changing, to name a few. The algorithms employed range from classical control theory methods to modern artificial intelligence-based approaches.

With the vision of full automation and connectivity in the future, the novel concept of lane-free traffic has been introduced where the necessity of conventional lanes is questioned. One of the main research focuses of this group is developing driving strategies for CAVs in such an environment.

As the chair of Traffic Engineering and Control, we also have the capability to implement developed strategies in simulation environments as well as test the concepts in test tracks to study the impact on close-to-real-world scenarios.

 

Conventional traffic control

• Traffic signal control at urban intersections
• Multi-modal control strategies
• Freeway traffic control

Traffic control with CAVs

• Automated intersection management (signal-free intersections)
• Cooperative driving
• Application of X2X communication in traffic control

Lane-free Traffic

• Lane-free traffic in urban networks
• Lane-free traffic in freeway networks
• Integration of VRUs in a lane-free environment