Driver centric decentralized controller design in traffic flow

In this paper, we consider a decentralized control problem for suppressing the traffic jam phenomenon in traffic flow. To analyze the phenomenon, we use the so-called optimal velocity model. In the model, the optimal velocity function which is a nonlinear function of the headway of the preceding vehicle describes driver's characteristics. Without affecting the characteristics, all vehicles in traffic flow should be stabilized in a decentralized fashion. In this paper, we apply washout control which is a high pass filter based control method. We derive a stability condition and illustrate the effectiveness with several simulations.