Although the investment and the interest in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is growing exponentially, robust real-time on-line traffic control strategies that can effectively use this ITS infrastructure do not exist yet. Recent advances in the area of mathematical control theory coupled with the availability of real-time traffic data present major opportunities for the development and implementation of robust traffic responsive real-time feedback control models and strategies. This integrated research and education project has the following objectives: 1. Development of feedback based on-line traffic control strategies that can be used for real-time traffic management during recurrent and non-recurrent congestion. Previous research in the area of traffic control mostly focused on the use of simulation / optimization based approaches. However, these traditional models are not generally applicable to real-time systems due to their very high computational costs and robustness requirements of real-time traffic control systems. The use of the feedback control design methodologies that can make use of real-time data collected by traffic sensors, constitutes an exact match with the requirements of ITS, due to the capability of feedback models to respond in real-time to the deviations of the system from its desired behavior. 2. Development of Virtual Interactive Traffic Simulation control on the Internet (VITSI) toolbox and use of real-time traffic data for laboratory testing and validation. VITSI toolbox will be developed using several programming languages including C/C++ and JAVA depending upon the computational requirements of the modules to be developed. The goal for developing VITSI is to provide researchers and students with a flexible and specialized traffic simulation and control design tool set they can use for the development, testing and validation of different real-time traffic control strategies. On-line traffic data acquired by Rutgers Intelligent Transportation (RITS) laboratory coupled with VITSI toolbox will also be used to test and validate developed models. This real-time traffic data will be mainly obtained from ITS facilities in New Jersey. 3. Introduction of the results of the proposed research activities into the undergraduate and graduate level traffic control courses through the use of the proposed VITSI toolbox and traffic data acquisition and processing capabilities at the recently established Rutgers Intelligent Transportation Systems (RITS) laboratory. With the advent of ITS, on-line traffic control design, testing, and implementation has become one of the fast growing areas of traffic engineering. However, feedback control techniques have not yet been effectively introduced into the traffic engineering education programs. This research project will design an integrated interdisciplinary research-education program that will incorporate feedback control techniques into both graduate and undergraduate traffic engineering classes. At the heart of the education efforts, there will be the use of VITSI toolbox concept coupled with the on-line traffic data acquisition and processing capabilities of the RITS laboratory. VITSI toolbox will be specifically designed to encourage the use of Internet based hands-on tools for effective teaching, learning, and research activities, and will complement RITS as a new research and education tool that does not currently exist.
