A control system for the individual route guidance in traffic flow networks

摘要

The problem of optimally routing a class of guided vehicles on an urban traffic network is considered in this paper. The guided vehicles give their requests in terms of origin, destination, and time window, and the control system returns to each of them the start time and the path to be followed, as provided by the solution of an original individual route guidance (IRG) problem. The control system integrates the IRG problem with a macroscopic traffic model in order to take into account the evolution of the traffic (in particular, of the congestions) on the network links. The traffic model and the IRG problem are mutually dependent one from the other, and for this reason the ultimate solution of the route guidance problem is iteratively sought. The control system has the objective of minimizing both the impact of the whole traffic and the individual costs of the guided vehicles.