Cooperative distributed control for lane-less and direction-less movement of autonomous vehicles on highway networks

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce lane-less and direction-less movement as a novel traffic characteristic of trajectory behavior for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) in highway networks. We assume that there is no barrier in the center of the highway to separate the traffic flow with different directions. This assumption enables the CAVs to move not only lane-less (lateral direction) but also direction-less (longitudinal direction). By applying this concept, we can exploit the maximum potential capacity of the highways, especially under unevenly distributed directional demand. However, the elimination of the conventional notion of vehicles’ movements on the separated domains of lanes and directions, can consequently increase the chaos and collision risk (and thus jeopardize safety). Thereby, we develop a cooperative distributed control strategy for the movement of CAVs in such a futuristic environment with the twofold objective of (i) providing safety in a microscopic (vehicle-to-vehicle) level and improve the traffic performance in a macroscopic (network) level.