An overview of artificial transportation systems

At present, the problems of urban traffic management and control have not yet been well solved, due to the great complexity of urban transportation systems. In this context, artificial transportation systems (ATS) theory was presented several years ago, and has been verified to be a promising approach to better management and control of complex transportation systems. On the basis of summarizing the research works on ATS to date, this paper systematically introduces the concept, theory frame and methods of ATS; meanwhile, the corresponding literatures are also reviewed. Then, as a major application approach of ATS, the parallel system theory is briefly introduced, and the major case studies of applying ATS are also reviewed. Finally, we analyze the current state-of-the-art of ATS, and point out the main research directions.