Modeling and Analysis of Traffic Flow Considering Vehicles with Automatic Gap Control

Abstract

In recent years, the number of vehicles with automatic gap control (AGC) (e.g., adaptive cruise control) has increased with the development of vehicle control technology. AGC mainly helps to ease driver fatigue on highways. Vehicles equipped with AGC can maintain an appropriate distance between two vehicles. Therefore, the traffic flow can be improved by AGC equipped vehicles. In this research, we develop a traffic flow model that considers AGC equipped vehicles, and is based on the Nagel-Schreckenberg model, which is a probabilistic cellular automaton model. The Nagel-Schreckenberg model can reproduce the basic features of traffic flow. On analyzing the mathematical model for the traffic including AGC equipped vehicles, we can obtain analytical solutions of the traffic flow and the average velocity.