Research on macroscopic traffic flow characteristics for automatic-driven flow in highway

With the application of intelligent transportation system, vehicle Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is widely used in highway. The macroscopic model of traffic flow consisting of ACC-equipped vehicles is investigated and analyzed in this paper. Based on state feedback control strategy of ACC, the macroscopic model for automated traffic flow is established by integrating the dynamical law of traffic flow (conservation equation, flow distribution). Then the macroscopic traffic flow model for automated flow is verified by simulation experiments with periodic boundary. Finally, it is proved that the application of ACC system is beneficial to increase the throughput and improve the traffic flow efficiently by analyzing the fundamental diagram and comparing them to the manual-driven traffic flow.