Multi-Agent-Architecture for simulating traffic management — A case study on highway networks

This paper addresses the automated management and simulation of capacity problems for motor highway infrastructures, which often cannot keep up with traffic increases produced by, e.g., cars, motorbikes and trucks. Such kinds of problems require rather intelligent highway infrastructure management with strategies with, often, contradictory goals: On the one hand side, individual drivers would like to use a traffic infrastructure which suits their individual needs best, e.g. with respect to time, resources, and personal driving comfort, and, on the other, the highway operators may want to optimize the use of their respective traffic infrastructure w.r.t. security, cost, and overall user satisfaction. This paper claims that such kinds of problems can be modelled best with using agent-oriented models and techniques. Therefore, it demonstrates how to use a generic multi-agent-system architecture that supports both modelling and simulating of such an application. It demonstrates how such an architecture can be used for applying, analyzing and comparing different traffic management strategies, inspired by different sources like network management, feedback control, or nature inspired coordination algorithms.