A Vehicle Trajectory Control Method at Signal Intersections with a Low Penetration Rate of Connected and Automated Vehicles

The technology of connected and automated vehicles (CAV) provides tremendous opportunities to facilitate the vehicle trajectory control at the signal intersection. However, it may still need a long time for the overall popularity of CAVs to arise due to various reasons. In this paper, we propose a vehicle trajectory control (VTC) method with a low penetration rate of CAVs to reduce the vehicle stop times without sacrificing the traffic efficiency at signal intersections. We first analyze the spread of the shock wave induced by the trajectory control of CAVs; based on this, the influence of individual CAVs on the traffic flow is determined. Then, we establish the vehicle trajectory control method based on the traffic wave theory and give the accurate control parameters. At last, the effects of CAV penetration rate are analyzed. The results show that the proposed VTC method is feasible and practical.