A Game-Theoretical Approach for Lane-Changing Maneuvers on Freeway Merging Segments

With the advances in communication technologies, a fully connected and automated traffic environment has become possible to be implemented. However, it is a fact that a road network that is ready to be operated in such a fashion needs several systems to handle different maneuvers in traffic flow. Therefore, in the study we summarize in the present paper, we propose an integrated system that is composed of three elements, which organizes longitudinal and lateral movements with the intention of mitigating shockwaves due to merging maneuvers. A car-following based (Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control) CACC model is used for longitudinal motion modeling, while vehicles approaching to the merging zone are controlled using a speed harmonization algorithm and, in cases of zone conflicts, a merging strategy that is based on the game theory is applied for flow management. Simulation results from a single lane road segment show that the proposed approach outperforms the performance of the system in which cooperative merging is not adopted.