The Role of Traffic Flow Preview for Planning Fuel Optimal Vehicle Velocity

A vehicle’s untimely arrival at a local traffic wave with lots of stops and goes increases its fuel use. This paper proposes predictive planning of the vehicle velocity for reducing the velocity transients in upcoming traffic waves. Macroscopic evolution of traffic pattern along the vehicle route is first estimated by combining a traffic flow model. The fuel optimal velocity trajectory is calculated by solving an optimal control problem with the spatiotemporally varying constraint imposed by the traffic. Preliminary simulation results indicate the potential for improvement in fuel economy with a little compromise on travel time.