Simulating platooned connected autonomous vehicle in a large scale urban scenario

This article is concerned with the performance evaluation of connected, autonomous vehicles (CAVs) in a realistic large-scale microsimulation scenario. In particular the question is: how much does a high diffusion of CAVs changes (1) the average travel speeds,(2) the trip times of all traffic participants, including pedestrians, and (3) the energy/fuel consumption.

For this purpose a 100% diffusion of platooning-capable CAVs is assumed as substitution for private cars in a morning rush hour scenario of the metropolitan area of Bologna, Italy with approx. 500,000 inhabitants.

The used scenario, which has been created and validated in previous works, represents an activity based demand model with travel plans for individual citizens, including all relevant transport modes. The microsimulation is performed by means of the SUMO simulator.

The entire demand has been generated with the SUMOPy tool. For the platooning of CAVs, SUMO’s SIMPLA module has been used, which controls the vehicles via the interactive TRACI API.

Results show an increased speed and reduced travel time for CAV vehicles, with respect to human driven cars, in particular in the periphery and less in the center with a dens road network. On the other hand the CAV scenario shows an increase in fuel consumption of approximately 5%.

The reason for this is the high catchup-speed which is a critical issue. For more realistic evaluations a 24h scenario is needed.

In addition V2I communication between platooned vehicles and traffic light (e.g. the use of GLOSA) is expected to further reduce congestion, decrease travel times and fuel consumption.