Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

• Title: COntrol and FOrecasting in Transportation networks

• International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • University of California Berkeley (United States) - Mechanical Engineering - Roberto Horowitz

• Start year: 2014

• See also: http://necs.inrialpes.fr/v2/pages/comfort/EA_homepage_COMFORT.html

• COMFORT addresses open issues for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The goal of these systems is to use information technologies (sensing, signal processing, machine learning, communications, and control) to improve traffic flow, as well as enhance the safety and comfort of drivers. It has been established over the past several decades, through field studies and many scholarly publications, that the tools of ITS can significantly improve the flow of traffic on congested freeways and streets. Traffic operators can manage the system in a top-down fashion, for example, by changing the speed limit on a freeway, or by controlling the flow on the onramps (ramp metering). Individual drivers can also affect traffic conditions from the bottom up, by making decisions based on reliable predictions. These predictions must be provided by a centralized system that can evaluate the decisions based on global information and sophisticate modeling techniques. It is now crucial to develop efficient algorithms for control and prediction that are well adapted to current and emerging sensing and communication technologies. The areas of traffic modeling and calibration, state estimation, and traffic control remain central to this effort. Specifically, COMFORT addresses issues related to model validation and development of new traffic forecasting and distributed control algorithms. The efficiency of the derived methods will be assessed using large networks simulators and real data obtained from the Californian and the Grenoble's testbed.

  This year is the final one of the current project: however, the positive results from the project have lead to the request of its extension, which is pending approval.