Goals / Ideas of the Project Organic Traffic Control (OTC³)

Organic Traffic Control (OTC³) aims at the realisation of an organic traffic control system for urban road networks. In the previous phases of the project, an adaptive learning intersection controller has been developed that is equipped with collaboration capabilities to allow for selforganised traffic light control in urban networks. In OTC³, the underlying observer/controller architecture will be further advanced and refined. Additionally, the existing system will be extended and improved with a novel route guidance and driver information component: Road users will be provided with route recommendations that consider the current and predicted state of the road network. Recommendations aim at minimising the individual travel times of road users while preventing the formation of congestions. Route guidance and traffic light control components will be integrated, so traffic lights can pro-actively adapt to recommended routes.
Decentralised and hierarchical system architectures will be investigated and compared to obtain a deeper understanding of the relationship between the local behaviour of a population of system elements and the global behaviour of the system, which is a central question for many OC systems. Both variants will be evaluated and compared, their working principles and benefits will be demonstrated. In the evaluation, a special focus will be on the robustness of the organic system with respect to unforeseen events and its flexibility to incorporate the goals of a human planner.