A scaled-down traffic system based on autonomous vehicles: A new experimental system for ITS research

In this paper, we present our recent efforts on developing a physical environment for performing traffic experiments. The two main characteristics of this environment are: (1) the whole environment is scaled down from the real traffic, (2) the traffic behaviors are performed by numbers of miniature autonomous vehicles. Performing traffic experiments in an actual environment has long been a hard problem. Moreover, modeling traffic phenomena is also a tough task, due to the complexity of the natural traffic system. However, with the rapid development of autonomous vehicle technology, we have an opportunity to improve these problems from a new perspective. That is using autonomous vehicles to perform traffic experiments. But with the limitations in cost and land availability, directly using full size autonomous vehicles also seemed unrealistic. Thus, we built a 1/10 scaled-down traffic system (SDTS) with more than 50 miniature autonomous vehicles. The environmental design, autonomous vehicles developing, agent modeling, traffic control, and real-time monitoring is considered systematically during system design. The SDTS can be used as a repeatable, appraisable, and verifiable experimental platform for traffic researches, such as testing traffic solutions, verifying key technologies in intelligent vehicles, and performing experiments about ITS. By now, the SDTS has supported a series of workshops, exchange activities and competitions in China.