This Congestion Impacts Reduction via CAV-in-the-loop Lagrangian Energy Smoothing (CIRCLES) project aims to reduce instabilities in traffic flow, called “phantom jams,” that cause congestion and wasted energy. If you have ever encountered a temporary traffic jam for no apparent reason, this might have been a phantom jam that occurred naturally because of human driving behavior.
Prior work on closed-course testing demonstrated that phantom jams can be reduced using autonomous vehicle technologies and specially-designed algorithms. The CIRCLES project seeks to extend this technology to real-world traffic, where reducing these negative traffic effects could provide ≥10% energy savings.
Resources
- Publication on Transportation Research Part C [I-24 MOTION: An instrument for freeway traffic science][trc-paper]
- CIRCLES Consortium
- I-24 MOTION project website
Coffee chat with Boston Public School students at Mass General Hospital