Guest Lecture

Abstract 

A distinguishing feature of vehicular traffic flow is that it may exhibit significant wave patterns. We first demonstrate that those frustrating (when stuck in traffic) traffic features possess an intriguing structural beauty (when seen from the outside), rendering phantom traffic jams to be mathematical analogs of detonation waves. We then show how a few well-controlled automated vehicles can mitigate traffic instabilities and waves, first in theory and simulation, then in real-world traffic experiments. These culminate in the CIRCLES (Congestion Impacts Reduction via CAV-in-the-loop Lagrangian Energy Smoothing) project: the largest field test of deployed control vehicles on a fully instrumented highway, carried out by a consortium of mathematicians, engineers, industry partners, and government agencies.