Review of the cellular automata models for reproducing synchronized traffic flow

Abstract

Cellular automaton (CA) approach is an important theoretical framework for studying complex system behavior and has been widely applied in various research field. CA traffic flow models have the advantage of flexible evolution rules and high computation efficiency. Therefore, CA develops very quickly and has been widely applied in transportation field. In recent two decades, traffic flow study quickly developed, among which 'synchronized flow' is perhaps one of the most important concepts and findings. Many new CA models have been proposed in this direction. This paper makes a review of the development of CA models, concerning their ability to reproduce synchronized flow as well as traffic breakdown from free flow to synchronized flow. Finally, future directions have been discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Cellular automata approach
• traffic flow models
• synchronized traffic flow modeling

Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful for Dr. Xiaopeng Li for his helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Note that most modeling efforts are based on the homogeneity assumption. Moreover, experimental efforts are being made to study traffic flow with only cars (Sugiyama et al. 2008; Nakayama et al. 2009; Tadaki et al. 2013; Jiang et al. 2014; Jiang et al. 2015; Jiang et al. 2018; Huang et al. 2018; Stern et al. 2018).

2 We would like to mention that in these models, the determination of brake light status may be not consistent with reality. The so called ‘brake light status’ actually means a certain kind of status of vehicles.

Additional information

Funding

JFT was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71771168, 71771167]. RJ was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71621001, 71931002] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2016RC009]. ZCQ was supported by the China Scholarship Council [grant number 201906250062].