A Low Market Penetration Rate friendly Variable Speed Limit System based on a PID Controller under Connected and Automated Vehicle Environment

With the emergence of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) and the development of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), new traffic control strategies have emerged. This paper focuses on the application of a Variable Speed Limit (VSL) system used in a connected environment. The speed control is activated by roadside telecommunication antennas, while its implementation relies on a moving bottleneck created by two CAVs: a controller and an agent regulated by a PID controller. The speed restriction is evaluated by applying heuristics, based on traffic theory and referred to as SPECIALIST in the literature. The originality of the method is based on the application of the speed restriction through 2 CAVs side by side on a 2-lane highway segment rather than through the CAV distributed in a disparate way on the network. The resulting system ensures efficient control even at low Market Penetration Rates (MPR) of the CAVs in the traffic stream.