Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2023

Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics; Department of Applied Computing; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is gaining tremendous attractiveness and showing great success in solving various problems, such as simplifying optimal control derivation. This work focuses on the application of Neuroevolution to the control of Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) cohorts operating at uncontrolled intersections. The proposed method implementation’s simplicity, thanks to the inclusion of heuristics and effective real-time performance are demonstrated. The resulting architecture achieves nearly ideal operating conditions in keeping the average speeds close to the speed limit. It achieves twice as high mean speed throughput as a controlled intersection, hence enabling lower travel time and mitigating energy inefficiencies from stop-and-go vehicle dynamics. Low deviation from the road speed limit is hence continuously sustained for cohorts of at most 50 m long. This limitation can be mitigated with additional lanes that the cohorts can split into. The concept also allows the testing and implementation of fast-turning lanes by simply replicating and reconnecting the control architecture at each new road crossing, enabling high scalability for complex road network analysis. The controller is also successfully validated within a high-fidelity vehicle dynamic environment, showing its potential for driverless vehicle control in addition to offering a new traffic control simulation model for future autonomous operation studies.

Publisher's Statement

Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3390/eng4020077

Publication Title

Eng

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Version

Publisher's PDF

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