Feature Analysis on Mixed Traffic Flow of Manually Driven and Autonomous Vehicles Based on Cellular Automata

Abstract

This paper attempts to disclose the features of the mixed traffic flow of manually driven vehicles (MVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs). Considering dynamic headway, the mixed traffic flow was modelled based on the improved single-land cellular automata (CA) traffic flow model (DHD) proposed by Zhang Ningxi. The established CA model was adopted to obtain the maximum flow of the mixed traffic flow and was analyzed under different proportions of AVs. On this basis, the features of the mixed traffic flow were summarized. The main results are as follows: the proportion of AVs has a significant impact on the mixed traffic flow; when the proportion reached 0.6, the flow of the whole lane was twice that of the MV traffic flow. At a low density, the AV proportion has an obvious influence on mixed traffic flow. At a high density, the mixed traffic flow changed very little, as the AV proportion increased from 0 to 5. The reason is that the flow of the whole lane is constrained by the fact that MVs cannot move faster. However, when the AV proportion reached 0.8, the flow of the whole lane became three times that at the proportion of 0.6. At the speed of 126 km/h, the flow rate was 2.5 times the speed limit of 54 km/h. The findings lay a theoretical basis for the modelling of multilane mixed traffic flow.