Through the project ‘Advanced Vehicles and Vehicle-Control Knowledge Centre’, the Hungarian National Office for Research and Technology supports the design of intelligent traffic-control systems. The main goal of the project is to interlace technological transfer by connecting universities, research centres and leading industrial partners.

Automotive technologies are gaining ground in modern road traffic-control systems, since the number of road vehicles and passengers is rapidly growing. There is a perpetual need for safety-critical traffic automation, and traffic engineering makes the dynamic or static analysis and the synthesis of automotive vehicle technologies possible. The main goal of engineering is the planning and management of traffic systems.

The project supports the development of reliable and optimal control structures for urban traffic and for motorway systems. The intelligent and cooperative set-up of actuation and its linkage to the central control system is vital for avoiding traffic jams and accidents. Moreover, environmental costs (eg pollution) can be decreased. The control architecture of systemis shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: General traffic management and control structure.

One aspect of the project aims at developing a traffic control algorithm for future technology. The design of the traffic control system can be evaluated in two steps – synthesis and analysis. Several models and multiple control strategies exist, and engineers must decide between them using a priori knowledge of the real system. Previously collected information can help to choose the appropriate model, parameters, measurement and control methodologies to create the optimal solution.

In many cases, control-related variables are almost inaccessible for design unless estimation techniques are applied. In a situation like this, the approximation, computer-based estimation of the variables could be useful. Traffic simulations can be classified in several ways, including the division between microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic, and between continuous and discrete time approaches. The methodologies of static and dynamic analysis of traffic systems are known. Several state variables, derived from the description of the dynamic system, can be used for operational and planning aspects