Platoon trajectories generation: A unidirectional interconnected LSTM-based car following model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel unidirectional interconnected LSTM model for generating platoon trajectories, significantly reducing error propagation and improving micro-simulation accuracy in traffic modeling.

Contribution

It proposes a new LSTM-based trajectory generation method with scheduled sampling and a unidirectional interconnected structure for better platoon-level traffic simulation.

Findings

Reduced error propagation by nearly 40% compared to traditional models

Enhanced accuracy in traffic micro-simulation during oscillations

Demonstrated effectiveness of the proposed model through systematic experiments

Abstract

Car following models have been widely applied and made remarkable achievements in traffic engineering. However, the traffic micro-simulation accuracy of car following models in a platoon level, especially during traffic oscillations, still needs to be enhanced. Rather than using traditional individual car following models, we proposed a new trajectory generation approach to generate platoon level trajectories given the first leading vehicle's trajectory. In this paper, we discussed the temporal and spatial error propagation issue for the traditional approach by a car following block diagram representation. Based on the analysis, we pointed out that error comes from the training method and the model structure. In order to fix that, we adopt two improvements on the basis of the traditional LSTM based car following model. We utilized a scheduled sampling technique during the training process to solve the error propagation in the temporal dimension. Furthermore, we developed a unidirectional interconnected LSTM model structure to extract trajectories features from the perspective of the platoon. As indicated by the systematic empirical experiments, the proposed novel structure could efficiently reduce the temporal and spatial error propagation. Compared with the traditional LSTM based car following model, the proposed model has almost 40% less error. The findings will benefit the design and analysis of micro-simulation for platoon level car following models.