Ioana-Alexandra Roșu

The paper discusses the potential for autonomous vehicles to improve traffic flow on roundabouts, suggesting that their ability to slow down strategically can enhance traffic and reduce pollution on both main and yielding roads. A traffic simulator for a roundabout was developed for a busy intersection of a new city neighborhood. We consider that some of the cars are self-driving, and they are fully aware of the traffic scenario. By optimizing their speed and timing their speed reduction, these vehicles can help maintain a balance between the number and time of crossing vehicles on both the main and yielding roads. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the intervention, demonstrating that autonomous vehicles can significantly improve roundabout efficiency, reducing congestion and pollution. The application of genetic algorithms is highlighted as an effective optimization method to find the right autonomous vehicle’s timing and speed reduction ratio combination on the main road to enhance traffic efficiency.

This paper explores the use of driver-in-the-loop simulations to detect personalized driving styles in autonomous vehicles. The driving simulator used in this study is modular and adaptable, allowing for the testing and validation of control and data-collecting systems, as well as the incorporation and proof of car models. The selected scenario is a double lane change maneuver to overtake a stationary obstacle at a relatively high speed. The user’s behavior was recorded, and lateral accelerations during the maneuver were used as criteria to compare the user-driven vehicle and the autonomous one. The tuning parameters of the lateral and longitudinal controllers were modified to obtain different lateral accelerations of the autonomous vehicle. A neural network was developed to find the combination of the two controllers’ tuning parameters to match the driver’s lateral accelerations in the same double lane change overtaking action. The results are promising, and this study suggests that driver-in-the-loop simulations can help increase autonomous vehicles’ safety while preserving individual driving styles. This could result in creating more individualized and secure autonomous driving systems that consider the preferences and behavior of the driver.