Cooperative Intersection with Misperception in Partially Connected and Automated Traffic

The emerging connected and automated vehicle (CAV) has the potential to improve traffic efficiency and safety. With the cooperation between vehicles and intersection, CAVs can adjust speed and form platoons to pass the intersection faster. However, perceptual errors may occur due to external conditions of vehicle sensors. Meanwhile, CAVs and conventional vehicles will coexist in the near future and imprecise perception needs to be tolerated in exchange for mobility. In this paper, we present a simulation model to capture the effect of vehicle perceptual error and time headway to the traffic performance at cooperative intersection, where the intelligent driver model (IDM) is extended by the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process to describe the perceptual error dynamically. Then, we introduce the longitudinal control model to determine vehicle dynamics and role switching to form platoons and reduce frequent deceleration. Furthermore, to realize accurate perception and improve safety, we propose a data fusion scheme in which the Differential Global Positioning system (DGPS) data interpolates sensor data by the Kalman filter. Finally, a comprehensive study is presented on how the perceptual error and time headway affect crash, energy consumption as well as congestion at cooperative intersections in partially connected and automated traffic. The simulation results show the trade-off between the traffic efficiency and safety for which the number of accidents is reduced with larger vehicle intervals, but excessive time headway may result in low traffic efficiency and energy conversion. In addition, compared with an on-board sensor independently perception scheme, our proposed data fusion scheme improves the overall traffic flow, congestion time, and passenger comfort as well as energy efficiency under various CAV penetration rates.

Automated summary

The emerging CAV has the potential to improve traffic efficiency and safety by cooperating at intersections. However, perceptual errors may occur due to external conditions, and a trade-off between efficiency and safety needs to be considered in the presence of both CAVs and conventional vehicles. Data fusion schemes can improve overall traffic flow and energy efficiency at various CAV penetration rates.