Lane- Free Microscopic Simulation for Connected and Automated Vehicles

This paper presents the ongoing development of the microscopic TrafficFluid-Sim simulator, aimed primarily for Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) under a novel lane-free traffic paradigm. In particular, TrafficFluid-Sim builds on the SUMO simulation infrastructure to model traffic environments featuring two novel vehicle characteristics: (i) Vehicles can be located at any arbitrary lateral position within the road boundaries; and (ii) Vehicles may exert, based on their automated driving and connectivity capabilities, “vehicle nudging” to other surrounding vehicles. As such, TrafficFluid-Sim enables simulation of novel CAV movement strategies for various types of road infrastructure and is an indispensable tool for the design, testing and evaluation of the characteristics of a future CAV traffic flow as an efficient artificial fluid, as envisaged by the ongoing TrafficFluid ERC project.