Consensus-based cooperative-control approach applied to urban traffic networks

Nowadays, many investigations actively pursue improvements in the performance of urban traffic networks. A central challenge is the need for cooperation between different parts of these networks such as vehicles and infrastructural systems. In this study, an algorithm for cooperative control of urban subsystems is applied to an alternative solution for mobility-related problems in cities. Thus, interconnected networks of traffic-light controllers (TLC) adapt traffic-light cycles, in order to decrease the concentration of air pollutants based on information from traffic-monitoring and pollution-monitoring systems in the city. The presence of atmospheric pollution in cities is not only caused by road traffic, but also by other sources of pollutants that contribute to rising or falling levels of atmospheric pollution. The complexity of the problem increases, due to the distributed and the heterogeneous nature of the different components. A design method based on a system-of-systems engineering approach is applied to the distributed consensus-based control algorithm. The control law that is applied contains a consensus-based component that processes data shared over the network to achieve consensus-based cooperative control over the TLC network components. Furthermore, Discrete Event Systems Specification (DEVS) formalism is applied for modeling and simulation purposes. The results of testing and validating the proposed solution in a simulated environment corroborate its powerful capacity to coordinate simultaneous responses to both pollution levels and traffic flows in urban traffic networks.