Multiple moving bottlenecks for traffic control in freeway systems

This paper introduces a new concept for traffic control in freeway systems by considering the presence of vehicle platoons as possible actuators to mitigate traffic congestion. It is known that the formation of platoons presents relevant advantages for the involved vehicles, first of all in terms of fuel consumption. Besides this, in this paper, the concept of platoon is further developed and it is investigated if the presence of platoons in the traffic stream can be exploited by a traffic controller to reduce traffic congestion. In this sense, each platoon can be seen as a moving bottleneck which influences the surrounding traffic conditions. The dimension of the platoon (i.e. number of vehicles composing it) and its velocity can be seen as control variables of a traffic management tool. In this paper, only the platoon speed is considered as control variable. Feedback regulators are discussed and their effectiveness is analyzed in simulation.