CAMMSE Ph.D. Student Miao Yu’s Dissertation Defense

Miao Yu
Infrastructure and Environmental Systems
Oct 15, 2018, 10:00:00 AM, EPIC Room 1332
Title: Optimal variable speed limit control for mixed traffic flows in a connected and autonomous vehicle environment
Abstract: Traffic demand grows rapidly over the past decades around the world, which leads to severe traffic congestion problems. Congestion has numerous negative effects, such as wasting the time of drivers and passengers, increasing delays, decreasing travel time reliability, wasting fuel, and increasing air pollution and greenhouse gas emission. In order to relieve highway congestion, this dissertation intends to systematically develop a variable speed limit (VSL) control framework in a connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) environment, in which the vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, infrastructure-to-vehicle, and platooning technologies are integrated with the VSL control. In addition, mixed traffic flows (including trucks and cars) are taken into account in the developed VSL control models. The policies (such as left-lane truck restriction policy) that are used to reduce the impacts of trucks on cars and CAV technologies (e.g., vehicle platooning) integrated with VSL control are explored. Multi-objective optimization models are formulated. In terms of the discrete speed limit values in the real world, discrete optimization techniques, such as genetic algorithm (GA) and tabu search (TS), are employed to solve the optimization control models. Different scenarios are designed to compare the control results. Sensitivity analyses are presented, and comprehensive characteristics underlying the VSL control are discussed in detail. Summary and conclusions are made, and further research directions are given.