TrafficFluid DSSL TUC

Traffic congestion is a serious threat for the economic and social life of modern societies as well as for the environment, which calls for drastic and radical solutions. TrafficFluid (2019-2024) is an ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant that puts forward an utterly original idea that leads to a novel paradigm for vehicular traffic in the era of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). TrafficFluid combines lane-free traffic with vehicle nudging to provide, for the first time since the automobile invention, the unprecedented possibility to design (rather than merely describe or model) the traffic flow characteristics in an optimal way, i.e. to engineer the future CAV traffic flow as an efficient artificial fluid. To this end, the project will develop and deliver the necessary vehicle movement strategies for various road infrastructures (motorways and urban roads), along with microscopic and macroscopic simulators and traffic management actions.