CAREER: Integrated Online Coordinated Routing and Decentralized Control for Connected Vehicle Systems

交通拥堵危害城市交通系统的功能，对城市经济的健康发展产生越来越大的负面影响。它还增加了空气污染，对我们公民的健康造成了许多负面影响。缓解交通拥堵的一个有希望的解决方案是建立协调驾驶机制。这是由最近的联网甚至自动驾驶汽车技术和先进的车载计算设施实现的。然而，设计这种机制的工程师仍然缺乏科学知识和有效的工具，这些工具可以被证明是有效和可靠的，供普通公众使用。这项教师早期职业发展(Career)项目奖的目标是开发创新的方法来协调联网车辆司机-在线路线选择。这将通过利用配备在互联交通基础设施中的新兴信息和计算技术来实现。这种方法将提高交通系统的机动性、安全性和环境可持续性，而不会牺牲个别车辆的利益。这一研究将加深我们对车辆之间对有限交通资源的竞争的理解。它还应该揭示单个车辆的决策对交通拥堵的影响，并提供一种实时交通控制的新范式。这一职业项目的具体研究目标是：(A)开发司机路线选择的协调机制，以缓解过度竞争；(B)设计司机的集体影响--提高系统一级性能的决策；以及(C)在在线环境中实施协调的路线选择机制和分散的交通控制。如果成功，这个项目将导致：(1)基于博弈论的协调路由机制的建模、分析和设计技术；(2)通过有意的信息扰动技术将分散控制集成到单独的路由决策中的创新方法；以及(3)更好地理解分布式分散拥塞控制算法的收敛、效率和健壮性。研究方法包括：(A)使用博弈论、最优化和交通动力学来设计和分析协调机制；(B)使用均衡分析、无政府状态价格、有限理性和分散控制来研究集体影响；以及(C)开发分布式算法来实现这些算法，并对这些算法进行理论分析。该项目将让人数不足的K-12学生、本科生和研究生参与许多研究任务，并通过多个渠道传播研究成果，如国家/国际研讨会和会议以及期刊出版物。

Traffic congestion jeopardizes the function of urban transportation systems and has a growing negative effect on the health of urban economies. It also increases air pollution with numerous negative health impacts on our citizenry. A promising solution to alleviating traffic congestion is to establish coordinated driving mechanisms. This is enabled by recent connected or even autonomous vehicle technologies and advanced onboard computing facilities. However, engineers who design such mechanisms are still lacking scientific knowledge and effective tools that can be proven as efficient and reliable for use by the general public. The goal of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program award is to develop innovative approaches to the coordination of connected vehicle drivers- online route choices. This will be done by exploiting emerging information and computing technologies equipped in connected transportation infrastructure. This approache will improve transportation system mobility, safety, and environmental sustainability without sacrificing the interests of the individual vehicles. This research will deepen our understanding of the competition among vehicles on limited traffic resources. It should also reveal the impacts of the decisions of individual vehicles on traffic congestion, and offer a new paradigm of real-time traffic control. The specific research objectives of this CAREER project are: (a) developing coordinated mechanisms for drivers - route choices to mitigate over-competition; (b) engineering collective effects of drivers - decisions to improve system-level performance; and (c) implementing the coordinated routing mechanisms and decentralized traffic control in an online environment. If successful, this project will lead to: (1) game-theory based modeling, analysis, and design techniques for coordinated routing mechanisms; (2) innovative methods for integrating decentralized control into individual routing decisions via intentional information perturbation techniques; and (3) better understanding of convergence, efficiency and robustness of distributed algorithms for decentralized congestion control. The reseach approaches include: (a) using game theory, optimization, and traffic dynamics to design and analyze coordination mechanisms; (b) using equilibrium analysis, price of anarchy, bounded rationality, and decentralized control for the study of collective effects; and (c) developing distributed algorithms for implementation and carrying out a theoretical analysis of these algorithms. This project will involve underrepresented K-12 students, undergraduate and graduate college students in numerous research tasks, and disseminate research findings through multiple channels, such as national/international workshops and conferences, as well as journal publications.