Modelling of cooperative lane changing in highways

Summarization: We depend heavily on transport in our everyday lives. Yet continuously increasing road traffic generates serious problems in terms of congestion, safety and environmental impact. Fortunately, information and communication technologies offer new advanced solutions to today's transport problems. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) embrace a wide variety of communications-related applications intended to increase travel safety, minimize environmental impact, improve traffic management and maximize the benefits of transportation to both commercial users and the general public. This thesis contributes to the development of a microscopic traffic behavior and performance model for fully automated vehicles concerning specifically to the lane changing regime on highways. An algorithm is constructed for cooperational lane changing with a set percentage of vehicles to lane change. This model is then merged with an on-ramp merging algorithm created by I. Dousakis as a relieving mechanism before the on-ramp in order to incorporate the inflow of the ramp into the highway. All lane changes are considered cooperative lane changes since it is assumed that the highway has 100% equipped automated vehicles. The developed model will be integrated in and tested on the Aimsun traffic modeling software