Multinode Bilateral Control Model

Bilateral control can suppress traffic flow instabilities. The simplest form of bilateral control uses information about the relative positions and relative velocities of leading and trailing vehicles. In this paper, we provide a multinode version of bilateral control, in which information about the state of more than just the immediately leading and trailing cars is used. In this mode of control, the question arises: "How much weight should information about vehicles at different positions be given?" Two different methods-a Taylor series approach and a least-squares approach-are explored. We show that the least-squares approach generates sets of coefficients that can damp out low-frequency components of perturbations faster. This means that traffic under multinode bilateral control will approach an equilibrium state more rapidly than under the traditional version of bilateral control. Simulation results confirm our analysis.