Abstract
We address the problem of harmonizing the speed of an increasing number of vehicles on a highway in real time. The objective is to derive the optimal acceleration/deceleration of each vehicle that harmonizes the speed of an increasing number of vehicles at a speed reduction zone on the highway, under the hard safety constraint to avoid rear-end collision. We formulate the control problem and provide an analytical and closed-form solution that can be implemented in real time. The solution yields the optimal acceleration/deceleration of each vehicle under the hard constraint of collision avoidance at the speed reduction zone. The effectiveness of the solution is evaluated through simulation and it is shown that the proposed approach can reduce significantly both fuel consumption and travel time. For different traffic volume levels, the per-vehicle fuel consumption were reduced by 12-17% over the base case and 2-12% over the state-of-the-art VSL algorithm. The travel time was reduced by 28-32% over the base case and 11-28% over the VSL algorithm.