Issues in Acquisition, Processing and Use of Information to Enhance the Performance of Transportation Systems

该奖项是在交通运输行业(ETI)工程探索性研究计划征集下颁发的。信息获取和处理是所有智能交通系统技术的核心。技术的进步继续促进了各种数据的获取。然而，为了实现交通系统与感知、驱动、数据采集和通信系统相匹配的潜在好处，需要一种方法来提供指导，说明要获取的信息以及如何处理和利用所获取的信息来增强交通系统的实时决策能力。本提案的重点是从组成车辆的控制动作的综合来设计交通流行为；我们将车辆视为信息感知、供应和执行装置。在本研究中，我们寻求以下问题的答案。在基本层面上，我们将探讨：1.交通系统的性能具有什么特征？哪些信息对提高运输系统的性能是相关和有用的？在这些中，在当前的技术状态下，什么是可行的？可以开发什么样的技术？2.必须开发什么工具来分析交通系统的性能？在应用层面，我们有兴趣确定以下问题的答案：1.如何确定交通系统中信息的获取、处理和利用对其性能的影响？2.给定交通系统的宏观性能规格，如何设计一个达到给定性能规格的交通系统？我们将开发工具来模拟交通流行为，检查它们的稳定性，并制定稳健的自适应交通流量控制策略，以补偿道路和天气条件以及车辆知情微观行动的影响引起的交通流量行为的任何变化。预计这项研究将为下一代车辆和交通控制系统所需的基础设施、通信和信息处理能力提供指导。

This award is being made under the Exploratory Research on Engineering the Transport Industries (ETI) program solicitation.Information acquisition and processing is central to all Intelligent Transportation System technologies. Technological advances continue to facilitate the acquisition of a wide variety of data. However, in order to realize the potential benefits of equpping the transportation systems with sensing, actuation, data acquisition and communication systems, methodologies that provide guidelines, on the information to be acquired and how the acquired information must be processed and utilised to empower the transportation system with real-time decision making capability, are required and are currently lacking.The focus of this proposal is on engineering traffic flow behavior from the synthesis of control actions for constituent vehicles; we view vehicles as information sensing, purveying and actuating devices.In this study, we seek answers to the following questions. At the fundamental level, we would enquire into: 1. What characterizes the performance of a transportation system? What information is relevant and useful to improve the performance of a transportation system? Of these, what is feasible with the current state of technology? What kind of technologies can be developed? 2. What tools must be developed for the analysis of performance of the transportation system?At the applied level, we are interested in determining answers to the following questions: 1. How does one determine the effect of information acquisition, processing and utilization in the transportation system on its performance? 2. Given macroscopic performance specifications of the transportation system, how does one engineer a transportation system that achieves the given performance specification?We will develop tools to model traffic flow behavior, examine their stability and develop robust adaptive traffic flow control strategies to compensate for any changes in traffic flow behavior arising from road and weather conditions and from the effects of informed microscopic actions of the vehicles. It is expected that this research will provide guidelines on required infrastructure, communication and information processing capabilities for the next generation of vehicular and traffic control sytems.