Advanced Mobility and Transport Engineering

Chapter 1

Agent-oriented Road Traffic Simulation ¹

1.1. Introduction

The main objective of (computer) road traffic simulation is to recreate and understand the observed traffic phenomena. Road traffic can be defined as the phenomena resulting from the movement of road users within a road network of limited capacity. The “traffic system” is characterized by an endeavor consisting of road infrastructure that was designed in such a way as to accommodate a collective optimum, and by an ever-increasing demand on the part of users looking to achieve an individual optimum. The reconciliation between private and collective interests gave birth to a vast amount of research, especially in traffic supervision [HAL 97], the optimization of traffic flow [BAZ 05] and in road infrastructures [ESP 02].

One of the notoriously difficult theoretical problems in the development of simulation devices is the case study of an intersection. Traditional approaches, consisting mainly of traffic simulation devices, have so far relied on considerable simplifications. A problem-solving mechanism within an intersection allows vehicles to enter an intersection as long as their trajectories do not cross. Such solutions are sometimes satisfactory, but they are not always appropriate when it comes to recreating the behavior of real drivers. The precision of these simulations is very important, as the driver interferes with the overall flow of the road network. For our purposes, we propose to tackle this traffic ...