Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Traffic Control via Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs): An Open-Road Field Experiment with 100 CAVs

Journal Article · · IEEE Control Systems
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [5];  [2];  [7];  [5];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [5];  [2];  [11];  [12];  [13];  [6] more »;  [6];  [14];  [15];  [16];  [17];  [18];  [18];  [19];  [6];  [20];  [6];  [5];  [21];  [22];  [23];  [23];  [6];  [24];  [25];  [26];  [5];  [5];  [6];  [6];  [27];  [5];  [28];  [29];  [15];  [30];  [31];  [32];  [33];  [34];  [15];  [5];  [35];  [36];  [5];  [37];  [38];  [37];  [39];  [6] « less
  1. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). et al.
  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
  3. Waymo, San Francisco, CA, USA
  4. Ecole des Ponts Paristech, Champs sur Marne, France
  5. Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA
  6. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
  7. Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA
  8. General Motors R&D, Herzliya, Israel
  9. Google, Mountain View, CA, USA
  10. Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Blacksburg, VA, USA
  11. New York University, New York City, NY, USA
  12. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
  13. Peking University, Beijing, China
  14. University of Alabama, Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, USA
  15. Nissan Advanced Technology Center, Santa Clara, CA, USA
  16. Footovision, Paris, France
  17. Unity Technologies, San Francisco, CA, USA
  18. Queen’s College, Kingston, ON, Canada
  19. Rutgers University—Camden, Camden, NJ, USA
  20. Department of Computer Science, Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA
  21. FAU Erlan-gen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
  22. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
  23. Rutgers University - Camden, Camden, NJ, USA
  24. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
  25. Legal & General America, Frederick, MD, USA
  26. General Motors, R&D, Herzliya, Israel
  27. Meta, Menlo Park, CA, USA
  28. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
  29. Transportation Engineering and Computer Science Lab (GRETTIA), University Gustave Eiffel Paris, Champs-sur-Marne, France
  30. Duolingo, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
  31. Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, USA
  32. Meta, Seattle, WA, USA
  33. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
  34. Wing, Palo Alto, CA, USA
  35. Amazon, Seattle, WA, USA
  36. Amazon Web Services, East Palo Alto, CA, USA
  37. Rutgers University — Camden, Camden, NJ, USA
  38. Vanderbilt University, TN, USA
  39. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
The CIRCLES project aims to reduce instabilities in traffic flow, which are naturally occurring phenomena due to human driving behavior. Also called “phantom jams” or “stop-and-go waves,” these instabilities are a significant source of wasted energy. Toward this goal, the CIRCLES project designed a control system, referred to as the MegaController by the CIRCLES team, that could be deployed in real traffic. Our field experiment, the MegaVanderTest (MVT), leveraged a heterogeneous fleet of 100 longitudinally controlled vehicles as Lagrangian traffic actuators, each of which ran a controller with the architecture described in this article. The MegaController is a hierarchical control architecture that consists of two main layers. The upper layer is called the Speed Planner and is a centralized optimal control algorithm. It assigns speed targets to the vehicles, conveyed through the LTE cellular network. The lower layer is a control layer, running on each vehicle. It performs local actuation by overriding the stock adaptive cruise controller, using the stock onboard sensors. The Speed Planner ingests live data feeds provided by third parties as well as data from our own control vehicles and uses both to perform the speed assignment. The architecture of the Speed Planner allows for the modular use of standard control techniques, such as optimal control, model predictive control (MPC), kernel methods, and others. The architecture of the local controller allows for the flexible implementation of local controllers. Corresponding techniques include deep reinforcement learning (RL), MPC, and explicit controllers. Depending on the vehicle architecture, all onboard sensing data can be accessed by the local controllers or only some. Likewise, control inputs vary across different automakers, with inputs ranging from torque or acceleration requests for some cars to electronic selection of adaptive cruise control (ACC) setpoints in others. The proposed architecture technically allows for the combination of all possible settings proposed previously, that is {Speed Planner algorithms} × {local Vehicle Controller algorithms} × {full or partial sensing} × {torque or speed control}. As a result, most configurations were tested throughout the ramp up to the MegaVandertest (MVT).
Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Rutgers University-Camden, NJ (United States); Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (United States); University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); US Department of Energy; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) (EE-3V)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; EE0008872
OSTI ID:
2545911
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 2572106
Journal Information:
IEEE Control Systems, Journal Name: IEEE Control Systems Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 45; ISSN 1066-033X
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (76)

Stanley: The robot that won the DARPA Grand Challenge journal January 2006
Uniqueness of Classical and Nonclassical Solutions for Nonlinear Hyperbolic Systems journal May 2001
A Holistic Approach to the Energy-Efficient Smoothing of Traffic via Autonomous Vehicles book January 2022
On the Dynamics of Large Particle Systems in the Mean Field Limit book January 2016
Learning a robust multiagent driving policy for traffic congestion reduction journal November 2023
Transport Equation with Nonlocal Velocity in Wasserstein Spaces: Convergence of Numerical Schemes journal July 2012
Car-following: a historical review journal December 1999
A hybrid controller for autonomous vehicles driving on automated highways journal December 2004
Modeling cooperative and autonomous adaptive cruise control dynamic responses using experimental data journal November 2014
Comparing INRIX speed data against concurrent loop detector stations over several months journal December 2014
Dissipation of stop-and-go waves via control of autonomous vehicles: Field experiments journal April 2018
I-24 MOTION: An instrument for freeway traffic science journal October 2023
Automatic vehicle trajectory data reconstruction at scale journal March 2024
The Automated Highway System Program: A Progress Report journal June 1996
A comprehensive review of the development of adaptive cruise control systems journal October 2010
A Comparision of Spacing and Headway Control Laws for Automatically Controlled Vehicles1 journal January 1994
Quantitative analysis of probe data characteristics: Coverage, speed bias and congestion detection precision journal October 2018
Traffic jams without bottlenecks—experimental evidence for the physical mechanism of the formation of a jam journal March 2008
Mean-field sparse optimal control
  • Fornasier, Massimo; Piccoli, Benedetto; Rossi, Francesco
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 372, Issue 2028 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2013.0400
journal November 2014
Dynamical model of traffic congestion and numerical simulation journal February 1995
Congested traffic states in empirical observations and microscopic simulations journal August 2000
Autonomous intelligent cruise control journal January 1993
Improving Urban Traffic Throughput With Vehicle Platooning: Theory and Experiments journal January 2020
Optimal Control of Autonomous Vehicles for Flow Smoothing in Mixed-Autonomy Traffic conference December 2023
Experimental testing of a control barrier function on an automated vehicle in live multi-lane traffic conference May 2022
Data from the Development Evolution of a Vehicle for Custom Control conference May 2022
Stabilizing Traffic with Autonomous Vehicles conference May 2018
Deploying Traffic Smoothing Cruise Controllers Learned from Trajectory Data conference May 2022
Reachability Analysis for FollowerStopper: Safety Analysis and Experimental Results conference May 2021
An automated truck platoon for energy saving conference September 2011
An experimental study on the fuel reduction potential of heavy duty vehicle platooning conference September 2010
Traffic Smoothing Controllers for Autonomous Vehicles Using Deep Reinforcement Learning and Real-World Trajectory Data conference September 2023
Control and Communication Challenges in Networked Real-Time Systems journal January 2007
Hierarchical Speed Planner for Automated Vehicles: A Framework for Lagrangian Variable Speed Limit in Mixed-Autonomy Traffic journal February 2025
Design, Preparation, and Execution of the 100-AV Field Test for the CIRCLES Consortium: Methodology and Implementation of the Largest Mobile Traffic Control Experiment to Date journal February 2025
Reinforcement Learning-Based Oscillation Dampening: Scaling Up Single-Agent Reinforcement Learning Algorithms to a 100-Autonomous-Vehicle Highway Field Operational Test journal February 2025
Traffic Smoothing Using Explicit Local Controllers: Experimental Evidence for Dissipating Stop-and-go Waves with a Single Automated Vehicle in Dense Traffic journal February 2025
The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2016: boosting the introduction of cooperative automated vehicles journal August 2016
Design and Experimental Validation of a Cooperative Driving System in the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge journal September 2012
Introduction to the Special Issue on the 2011 Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge journal September 2012
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control in Real Traffic Situations journal February 2014
Are Commercially Implemented Adaptive Cruise Control Systems String Stable? journal January 2020
EU ENSEMBLE Project: Specification of an Interoperable Solution for a Support Function for Platooning journal June 2023
Demonstration of an automated highway platoon system conference January 1998
Dissipation of Emergent Traffic Waves in Stop-and-Go Traffic Using a Supervisory Controller conference December 2018
Interstate-24 MOTION: Closing the Loop on Smart Mobility conference April 2020
Strym: A Python Package for Real-time CAN Data Logging, Analysis and Visualization to Work with USB-CAN Interface conference May 2022
WiP Abstract: Stabilizing Traffic with a Single Autonomous Vehicle conference April 2016
Vehicle Tracking with Crop-based Detection conference December 2021
Deploying Traffic Smoothing Cruise Controllers Learned from Trajectory Data conference May 2022
Online Min Cost Circulation for Multi-Object Tracking on Fragments conference September 2023
Cooperative Driving for Speed Harmonization in Mixed-Traffic Environments conference June 2023
Mean-Field of Optimal Control Problems for Hybrid Model of Multilane Traffic journal December 2021
A Hierarchical MPC Approach to Car-Following via Linearly Constrained Quadratic Programming journal January 2023
So you think you can track? conference January 2024
Approximation Theory and Approximation Practice, Extended Edition book January 2019
Limitations and Improvements of the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) journal July 2022
Dissipation of Traffic Jams Using a Single Autonomous Vehicle on a Ring Road journal May 2023
A rigorous multi-population multi-lane hybrid traffic model for dissipation of waves via autonomous vehicles journal May 2022
Simulation to scaled city conference April 2019
Lightweight LSTM for CAN Signal Decoding conference May 2021
Libpanda: A High Performance Library for Vehicle Data Collection
  • Bunting, Matthew; Bhadani, Rahul; Sprinkle, Jonathan
  • CPS-IoT Week '21: Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things Week 2021, Proceedings of the Workshop on Data-Driven and Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3459609.3460529
conference May 2021
Integrated Framework of Vehicle Dynamics, Instabilities, Energy Models, and Sparse Flow Smoothing Controllers conference May 2021
From CAN to ROS: A Monitoring and Data Recording Bridge
  • Elmadani, Safwan; Nice, Matthew; Bunting, Matthew
  • CPS-IoT Week '21: Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things Week 2021, Proceedings of the Workshop on Data-Driven and Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3459609.3460531
conference May 2021
Parameter Estimation for Decoding Sensor Signals
  • Nice, Matthew; Bunting, Matthew; Zachar, Gergely
  • Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 14th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (with CPS-IoT Week 2023) https://doi.org/10.1145/3576841.3589622
conference May 2023
Middleware for a Heterogeneous CAV Fleet conference May 2023
Approaches for Synthesis and Deployment of Controller Models on Automated Vehicles for Car-following in Mixed Autonomy conference May 2023
Analysis of a Runtime Data Sharing Architecture over LTE for a Heterogeneous CAV Fleet conference May 2023
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: Driver Acceptance of Following Gap Settings Less than One Second journal September 2010
Car-Following and Steady-State Theory for Noncongested Traffic journal February 1961
Nonlinear Follow-the-Leader Models of Traffic Flow journal August 1961
Impacts of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control on Freeway Traffic Flow
  • Shladover, Steven E.; Su, Dongyan; Lu, Xiao-Yun
  • Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Vol. 2324, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3141/2324-08
journal January 2012
Review of Variable Speed Limits and Advisories
  • Lu, Xiao-Yun; Shladover, Steven E.
  • Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Vol. 2423, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3141/2423-03
journal January 2014
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: Definitions and Operating Concepts
  • Shladover, Steven E.; Nowakowski, Christopher; Lu, Xiao-Yun
  • Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Vol. 2489, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3141/2489-17
journal January 2015
On the well-posedness of the "Bando-follow the leader" car following model and a time-delayed version journal January 2023
CANClassify: Automated Decoding and Labeling of CAN Bus Signals journal October 2022