Principal Investigator(s):
Eil Kwon, Professor, UMD-Civil Engineering
Project summary:
A signal operations research laboratory will be developed to provide more realistic environment for developing and testing new control strategies prior to field implementation. The laboratory, combining a microscopic intersection simulator and the state-of-the-art signal control hardware, will allow new control strategies to be directly programmed onto the control hardware, so that the feasibility and robustness of new control algorithms in real traffic environment can be tested prior to field implementation. Further, the intersection simulator can be used as the modeling laboratory where different modeling methodologies can be tried and evaluated for more realistic representation of the intersection traffic behavior. In this research, the intersection traffic simulator developed in the previous research will be substantially enhanced with a more efficient programming language, which will allow the future expansion to a large network simulator with minimum additional effort. The state-of-the-art signal control hardware will be purchased and data communication module between the simulator and the controller will be developed. The new link-congestion based adaptive control strategy developed in the previous research will also be enhanced and tested in the laboratory. The resulting laboratory will provide a comprehensive research and educational environment, where new signal operations hardware and control strategies can be introduced and evaluated in a controlled environment.