Mar 06, 2025
New project - AutoFlock
Traffic congestion causes significant societal costs. Intelligent traffic flow control can help reduce these costs.
The use of cooperative automated vehicles (CAVs) for such control enables the development of entirely new concepts.
Inspired by swarm formation mechanisms in nature, our new project AutoFlock, which successfully kicked off on March 4, 2025, aims to develop a new paradigm for traffic flow regulation.
To achieve this, well-established concepts from traffic flow theory are combined with the innovative approach of two-dimensional (2-D) CAV swarms. These individual swarms interact with one another through local communication and manage mixed traffic without issuing direct control commands to human-driven vehicles (HVs).
We are pleased that Johannes Schäfer, a research associate at our department, will be contributing to this project as part of his doctoral studies.
AutoFlock is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Martin Treiber, Chair of Econometrics and Statistics, particularly in the transport sector, at TU Dresden, and Dr. Yufei Yuan, Department of Transport and Planning, TU Delft. The project is being funded through the research grant scheme of the DFG.
If we’ve sparked your interest in learning more—or even in a potential collaboration—you can find further information and our contact details here.