Cooperative Ramp Merging for Mixed Traffic with Connected Automated Vehicles and Human-Operated Vehicles

Abstract

The rapid theoretical development and commercialization of connected automated vehicle (CAV) has led to the problem of mixed traffic, i.e., traffic mixed with CAVs and conventional human-operated vehicles (HVs). The paper studies cooperative ramp merging for mixed traffic. Using discrete optimization, a cooperative ramp merging mechanism is developed to facilitate ramp merging, and to properly capture the cooperative and non-cooperative behaviours in mixed traffic. The mechanism can be described as a bi-level optimization program in which the optimal control-based trajectory design problem is imbedded in the merge sequencing problem. A bi-level dynamic programming-based solution approach is developed to efficiently solve the problem. A micro-simulation environment is built for model validation and analysis of mixed traffic. The results show that cooperative ramp merging leads to larger throughput and smoother traffic.