Coordinated Online In-Vehicle Navigation Guidance Based on Routing Game Theory

• Published in: Transportation research record 2015-01, Vol.2497 (1), p.106-116
• Main Authors: Du, Lili, Chen, Shuwei, Han, Lanshan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0361-1981; 2169-4052
• DOI: 10.3141/2497-11

This study proposed a coordinated online in-vehicle routing mechanism for smart vehicles with real-time information exchange and portable computation capabilities. The proposed coordinated routing mechanism was modeled as a pure-strategy atomic routing game and was implemented by a sequentially updating distributed algorithm. This study showed the existence of an equilibrium joint routing decision for the routing game and the convergence of the distributed algorithm to an equilibrium; this equilibrium was based on the assumption that individual smart vehicles were selfish players who tried to minimize their own travel time and shared their route choices with other smart vehicles directly or indirectly. Numerical experiments based on the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, network indicated that the proposed distributed algorithm converged very quickly; thus the algorithm has great potential for online applications. Moreover, the proposed coordinate routing mechanism outperformed traditional independent routing mechanisms under various traffic regimes. The mechanism reduced travel time for both the overall system and the majority of individual vehicles; this achievement was the core idea of intelligent transportation systems. These positive effects were more significant in congested traffic condition than in free traffic. The experiments also indicated that even with imperfect information provision, the proposed approach could work well for convergence as well as travel time reduction in systems and individual vehicles.