IDE for Vehicular Traffic Simulation

In this R&D based project an IDE namely, Vehicular Traffic Simulator (VTS) would be developed. The VTS would include a scenario building tool for domain experts e.g. transportation scientists, engineers, and managers. The VTS could be used to model road infrastructures and vehicular traffic in a

Project Title

IDE for Vehicular Traffic Simulation

Project Area of Specialization

Artificial Intelligence

Project Summary

In this R&D based project an IDE namely, Vehicular Traffic Simulator (VTS) would be developed. The VTS would include a scenario building tool for domain experts e.g. transportation scientists, engineers, and managers. The VTS could be used to model road infrastructures and vehicular traffic in an integrated manner to build and experiment novel traffic infrastructures and policies. This tool would help in reducing the learning curve of domain experts by providing an easy and readily usable vehicular traffic simulation tool for various decision-making purposes in the process of public policy making. The VTS could also be used to perform different “what if analysis” experiments related to transportation science and engineering studies. This software could also be used by governmental transportation engineering and planning departments to test transportation related interventions and effective policy making. Research scientists working on transportation science could also use this software suite to investigate different scientific inquires. This software visualizes the vehicular traffic simulation based on various vehicular simulation models in a 3D environment. This 3D visualization of traffic can also help in training and assessing the skills of a driver in a scenario-based simulation, which would be helpful for researchers to observe, test and provide solutions by applying different methods of testing, and understanding the outcome or behavior of the driver in that certain situation.

Project Objectives

• A user-friendly tool which helps to design realistic road infrastructure considering the local urban context.
• Vehicular traffic generation based on well-defined models and appropriate statistical distributions.
• Communication between road traffic simulation package with various simulation models and a three-dimensional real-time transportation visualizer.
• Simulation of varying traffic scenarios on different road infrastructures.
• Logging of vehicular simulated data.
• Visualization in a three-dimensional vehicular traffic simulation.
• Analytics of data generated by simulations.

Project Implementation Method

The implementation of this IDE will start from a road designer/generator which would read road infrastructure data in a standard format to generate it in a 3D environment using Unity 3D. This generation process would require a parser to be developed which would efficiently generate the road network. This road network will be obtained from SUMO and OpenStreetMap. We can also generate user-specific road infrastructure in SUMO. After generating road infrastructure in 3D, the system would also develop its surrounding environment which can be modified by the user. Simulation models would be required to run traffic in generated 3D environment. These models would be provided by SUMO which would run simulation and this simulation of traffic would be rendered in real-time on generated road infrastructure. A driver simulator would also be implemented to test the driver skills and log his behavior. This feature will provide the user to drive a vehicle on the 3D road infrastructure with traffic simulating on it. The controls of vehicle would be implemented in Unity 3D to work with a Logitech hardware system which includes steering wheel, gearbox, accelerator, brake, and clutch.

Benefits of the Project

• This IDE would provide for domain experts with the ability to design and experiment scenarios to simulate road infrastructure and vehicular traffic with ease.
• This IDE would provide simulated data which would be useful in understanding and providing solutions for transportation bottlenecks.
• This IDE would provide the facility to learn and test driving on various road infrastructures in a simulated vehicular traffic.
• This IDE would provide transportation engineering and planning departments to test transportation interventions and effective policy making decisions.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

An IDE would be provided in final deliverable which would allow to design road infrastructure, run multiple realistic traffic models and observe the behavior of traffic on different road networks to resolve traffic issues e.g. bottlenecks. This IDE would allow a driver to run vehicle in the designed road network with certain traffic models to assess the driver’s driving skills in the simulated environment. Following tools and techniques would be used: (1) SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) is an open source, highly portable, microscopic and continuous traffic simulation package designed to handle large road networks. SUMO will be used to draw various road networks and define routes on which vehicular traffic simulation will run by using various vehicular traffic simulation models. (2) Unity is cross-platform game engine. This engine can be used to create 3D, 2D, VR, and AR games as well as simulations and other experiences. Unity will be used in this project for 3D visualization of the road infrastructure and vehicular traffic simulation. It will also visualize simulation of vehicular traffic in real-time by getting simulation data from SUMO’s TraCI server. (3) OMNeT++ is an extensible, modular, component-based C++ simulation library and framework, primarily for building network simulators. The IDE of OMNeT++ will be used for quickly setting up and interactively running simulations. It will be visualizing the communication of the vehicles running on a road network. This makes it possible to investigate dynamic re-routing around the situations like accidents, bottlenecks etc. OMNeT++ will be getting the simulation data for the road networks and the vehicular traffic from SUMO’s TraCI server with the help of VEINS. (4) VEINS (VEhicles In Network Simulation), ships as a suite of simulation models for vehicular networking. These models are executed by an event-based network simulator (OMNeT++) while interacting with a road traffic simulator (SUMO). With only a few parameters tweaked, it is designed to serve as an execution environment for user written code. VEINS will be used in this project to apply different traffic simulation models in vehicular network simulation, without sacrificing speed with different scenarios for proper training and assessment of the driver. VEINS will also be taking care of the traffic efficiency, traffic safety and comfort during the simulation.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

IT

Other Industries

Transportation

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Augmented & Virtual Reality

Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and Communities

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com