Summary

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is increasingly using the Paramics microscopic traffic simulation as an assisting tool in transportation planning, traffic control and management and ITS research and deployment. A typical deficiency of Paramics is the built-in traffic signal control logic can not provide advanced features available on 170/2070 signal controllers. The objective of this project is to develop enhanced Paramics simulation tools with substantial control functions of l70/2070 controllers.

The accomplishment of the project will be achieved through two approaches, the Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HiL) and the virtual 2070 controller. The concept of the HiL simulation is to interface Paramics with real 170 controller(s) so that they can "talk" to each other through two-way communication. Traffic simulation emulates traffic flow and loop detector and sends replicated detector information to the real traffic controller, the controller, in return, responds to the detector information just as it does in the field but sends back control indications to traffic simulation. It is noteworthy project suggests direct connection between simulation and signal controller without use of the Controller Interface Device (CID) in both one-to-one and one-to-multi interfaces rather than the CID approach.

The virtual 2070 controller will be provided through either further development of the existing Paramics/VS-PLUS software or coding 2070 control source code into Paramics. Paramics/VS-PLUS is an integrated interface between the micro simulation Paramics and the signal control software VS-PLUS. Our primary interest to VS-PLUS is to what extent and how accurate it can emulate 170/2070 controllers. To this end, we will first evaluate the functionality of the Paramics/VS-PLUS software using the HiL tool, then depending on the test result, decide either further develop the software or, develop a platform independent virtual controller software that can mimic control logic of 2070 controllers.