VATSIM: a Vehicle And Traffic SIMulator

We have implemented a road and vehicle simulation software package that is suitable for evaluating the modeling and control issues that arise in automated highway and intelligent transportation system studies and demonstrations involving multiple interacting autonomous vehicles. The simulator provides for a user-specified roadway layout, which can include both highways and surface roads, and multiple classes of vehicle and controller models that can be multiply instantiated to create a world of interacting individual agents. The simulator provides a graphical interface for the visualization of results, data storage for post-simulation analysis, and some user interaction.