Levitate
Development and application of Aimsun to the assessment of autonomous and connected vehicles.
Research Projects Cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM)
Final Customer
European platform for C-Roads
Prime Contractor
Dirección General de Tráfico del Ministerio del Interior (Ministry of the Interior Traffic Department)
Location
Girona and Madrid, Spain
Dates
2017 – June 2021
Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS). C-ROADS platform: Spain
MICROSIMULATION
I2V COMMUNICATION
CONNECTED VEHICLES
The C-Roads Platform is a cooperation of EU member states and road operators working on the deployment of harmonized and interoperable C-ITS services in Europe. The aim is to test innovative traffic technologies, including connected vehicle technologies, using traffic simulation software to provide a “virtual twin” to help understand the impact of a massive rollout of C-ITS services across a huge range of hypothetical scenarios.
Project Location
There are six test sites in the C-Roads Spain project and Aimsun participates in two of them:
- the northeast part of the AP-7 Mediterranean Highway in Girona: 120 km of a toll-controlled motorway between La Roca del Vallès and La Jonquera.
- the M-30 Ring Road in Madrid with 32 km length with 1,5M of daily trips, 460M vehicle every year and with the longest urban tunnel in Europe (118km).
Aimsun Solution
Aimsun developed two Aimsun Next microscopic models for the AP-7 and M-30 highways, using historical traffic data to validate the base scenarios. Different use cases were later implemented in the same models to evaluate the benefits that each C-ITS service could provide compared to the base scenarios, depending on the level of penetration of connected vehicles. The services analyzed were: road works warnings, hazardous location notification in case of accident zone or a slow-moving vehicle, and traffic information and smart routing.
Benefit to Customer
Aimsun simulations successfully sped up C-ITS large-scale deployment in Spain and Europe by analyzing the scalability and replicability of results. The simulation of C-ITS services with a wide range of penetration levels was able to not only predict future problems but also reduce the cost of a massive implementation.
Reason for Success
Harmonization is the core asset of the C-Roads Platform, since it ensures sustainable and efficient deployment. Consequently, all partners share the vision of the main objectives, which are – beside harmonisation – (pilot) implementation, demonstrations of C-ITS deployment and advance to largescale deployment.
The Aimsun Next software provides an ideal simulation environment to test any type of C-ITS service thanks to its traffic management module and a customized plugin (Software Development Kit or SDK) to explicitly represent the Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (I2V) communication.
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