Traffic control via moving bottleneck of coordinated vehicles

We investigate the possibility of properly controlling a given vehicle to improve overall traffic flow. The system is described by a micro-macro model taking into account the interactions of the vehicle with the surrounding traffic. We state an optimal control problem using the maximal speed of the coordinated vehicle as control variable. More precisely, we use the MPC (Model Predictive Control) approach to get a fuel consumption reduction when the traffic is congested due to the presence of a fixed downstream bottleneck on the highway. In addition we show that the control application also improves the average travel time and queue length. The concept illustrated in this paper suggests innovative future traffic control approaches. Indeed the perspective of exploiting controlled vehicles to regulate the traffic flow is particularly attractive given the expected increasing penetration rate of autonomous vehicles in traffic networks in future years.