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Microscopic car-following model for the traffic flow: the state of the art

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Abstract

Car-following theory is an important research direction in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), it describes the one-by-one following process of vehicles on the same lane in traffic flow, and one of its important issues is congestion control. To explore the strategy for controlling traffic congestion, this paper introduces and analyzes some classic car-following models, and gives a systematic review of their developments. Moreover, in order to introduce the approach to analyze the stability, taking the full velocity difference (FVD) model for example, the local and asymptotic stability analysis is discussed, while the corresponding nonlinear analysis is also conducted. Then, some perspectives of the car-following model are given in the final.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Automation, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Yongfu Li & Dihua Sun

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  1. Yongfu Li
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  2. Dihua Sun
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Correspondence to Yongfu Li.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Chongqing Natural Science Foundation (No. CSTC2012JJB40002), the Chongqing Academy of Science Foundation (No. CSTC2011JJYS30001), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. CDJXS10170002), and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20090191110022).

Yongfu LI is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Automation, Chongqing University. His research interests include transportation cyber-physical systems (T-CPS), intelligent transportation systems (ITS), system engineering, and car steering control.

Dihua SUN is a professor at the College of Automation, Chongqing University. He received his B.S. degree in Control Theory from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, M.S. degree in Control Theory and Applications, and Ph.D. degree both from Chongqing University, in 1982, in 1989, and in 1997, respectively. His current research interests include transportation cyber-physical systems (T-CPS), intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and computer vision control.

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Li, Y., Sun, D. Microscopic car-following model for the traffic flow: the state of the art. J. Control Theory Appl. 10, 133–143 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-012-9221-z

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