Traffic Smoothing Using Explicit Local Controllers: Experimental Evidence for Dissipating Stop-and-go Waves with a Single Automated Vehicle in Dense Traffic

This article presents experimental evidence of the ability of a single automated vehicle acting as a controller to effectively dissipate stop-and-go waves in real traffic. The automated vehicle succeeded in stabilizing the speed profile by reducing oscillations in time and speed variations between vehicles during rush hour on I-24 in the Nashville area. We detail the control design, deployment and results obtained in this experiment, conducted as part of the CIRCLES consortium’s “MegaVanderTest” 2022, which involved a total of 100 automated vehicles.