Real-world Applications for Connected Vehicle Data

Abstract

The conventional approach of collecting real world traffic data for management purposes is through stationary detectors, for example magnet field sensors, induction loops, cameras, radar etc. The downside of this detection method is that only momentary information can be obtained and e.g. the behavior of the vehicles approaching an intersection can only be approximated. Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication protocols have a broad variety of applications for traffic management purposes. Through continuous updates, vehicle trajectories can be traced in order to provide optimal routing information for vehicles or to switch traffic lights to green the moment they want to pass an intersection. This paper describes two real-world use-cases for CAM (Cooperative Awareness Message) data provided by connected vehicles (CV) as detector input for traffic management applications. When used in a traffic simulation, detecting vehicles though these messages leads to a more realistic representation of the vehicle's driving behavior. CAMs can be used to place and move CVs inside the simulation of a real-world intersection in Braunschweig with the traffic simulation SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility). Furthermore, the paper describes an approach to how these continuously detected vehicles could be further used as control units. Since the positions and speeds of CVs are synchronized with the real-world behavior, they can be used to adjust the simulated upstream movements and positioning of legacy vehicles (LV) to match reality. Until all vehicles are equipped with V2X technology, this approach could enable more realistic simulated traffic flow behavior.