Lane change maneuvers are main causes of traffic turbulence at highway bottlenecks. We propose a dynamic game framework to derive the system optimum strategy for a network of cooperative vehicles interacting at a merging bottleneck. Cooperative vehicles on the highway mainline seek for optimal strategies (i.e., whether and when to perform courtesy lane change to facilitate the merging vehicle) to minimize their cost, while taking into account potential future interactions at the merging section while minimizing the distance traveled on the acceleration lane. An optimal strategy is found by minimizing the joint cost of all interacting vehicles while respecting behavioral and physical constraints. Numerical examples show the feasibility of the approach in capturing the nature of conflict and cooperation during the merging process, and demonstrate the benefits of sharing information and cooperative control for connected and automated vehicles.

Chapter Contents:

• 7.1 Introduction
• 7.2 Problem formulation
• 7.3 Highway traffic system dynamics
• 7.3.1 Longitudinal dynamics
• 7.3.2 Lateral dynamics
• 7.3.3 Lane change and dynamic communication topology
• 7.3.4 Closed-loop dynamics
• 7.4 Game theoretic formulation of the lane change decision problem
• 7.4.1 Dynamic lane change game formulation
• 7.4.2 Existence of equilibrium
• 7.4.3 Properties of the lane change dynamic game
• 7.5 Numerical examples
• 7.5.1 Experimental setting
• 7.5.2 Scenario 1: delayed merge
• 7.5.3 Scenario 2: courtesy lane change
• 7.6 Conclusion
• References

Inspec keywords: road traffic control; traffic engineering computing; road traffic; road safety; game theory; road vehicles; roads

Other keywords: merging section; perfect information; acceleration lane; highway mainline; account potential future interactions; merging bottleneck; highway bottlenecks; optimal strategy; joint cost; traffic turbulence; merging process; interacting vehicles; merging vehicle; system optimum strategy; dynamic game framework; lane change maneuvers; game theoretic lane change strategy; courtesy lane change; connected automated vehicles

Subjects: Other topics in statistics; Road-traffic system control; Traffic engineering computing