Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d’Automatique de l’Artois

Ph.D. thesis of Hirsh MAJID

Contribution to the estimation and control of intelligent transport systems

Starting date: 1 November 2011
Funding: French-Iraqi grant
Keywords: Intelligent transportation systems, Traffic flow, Ramp metering, Dynamic traffic routing, Estimation, Macroscopic models, Sliding mode control, Model predictive control
Advising:

The works presented in this PhD dissertation fit into the framework of Intelligent TransportationSystems. Although the beginnings of these systems have started since the 60s, their development, basedon information and communication technologies, has reached maturity during the early 80s. The ITS usesthe intelligence of different systems (embedded systems, intelligents sensors, intelligents highways, etc.)in order to optimize road infrastructures performances and respond to the daily problems of congestions.The dissertation presents four contributions into the framework of road traffic flow and tackles theestimation and control problems in order to eliminate or at least reduce the “recurrent" congestionsphenomena. The first point treats the problem of traffic state estimation which is of most importance inthe field of ITS. Indeed, the implementation and performance of any control strategy is closely relatedto the ability to have all needed information about the traffic state describing the dynamic behavior ofthe studied system. Two estimation algorithms are then proposed. The first one uses the “metanet"model and high order sliding mode techniques. The second is based on the so-called Cell TransmissionModels. Several comparative studies with the Kalman filters, which are the most used in road traffic flowengineering, are established in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Thethree other contributions concern the problem of traffic flow control. At first, the focus is on the isolatedramp metering using an algorithm based on the high order sliding mode control. The second contributiondeals with the dynamic traffic routing problem based on the high order sliding mode control. Such controlstrategy is enriched by introducing the concept of integration, in the third contribution. Indeed, integratedcontrol consists of a combination of several traffic control algorithms. In this thesis the proposed approachcombines an algorithm of on-ramp control with a dynamic traffic routing control. The obtained results arevalidated via numerical simulations. The validated results of the proposed isolated ramp metering controlare compared with the most used ramp metering strategy : ALINEA. Finally, the last contributiontreats the coordination problems. The objective is to coordinate several ramps which cooperate andchange information in order to optimize the highway traffic flow and reduce the total travel time in theapplied area. All these contributions were validated using real data mostly from French freeways. Theobtained results show substantial gains in term of performances such as travel time, energetic consumptiondecreasing, as well as the increasing in the mean speed. These results allow to consider several furtherworks in order to provide more interesting and efficient solutions in the ITS field.

Involved research themes:

Involved application areas:

No partner is associated with this element.

Defense

Defense took place the 08/12/2014 am31 10:00 Prestige room - FSA - Béthune

Jury:

  • Rapporteur Cédric JOIN Université de Lorraine
  • Rapporteur Saïd MAMMAR Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne
  • Examinateur Thierry Marie GUERRA Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut Cambrésis
  • Examinateur Michel FLIESS Ecole Polytechnique
  • Examinateur Dimitri LEFEBVRE Université du Havre
  • Co-supervisor Gildas MORVAN Université d'Artois
  • Co-directeur Hassane ABOUAISSA Université d'Artois
  • Directeur Daniel JOLLY Université d'Artois