Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Nonlocal Flow Modeling of Connected Automated Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a physics-informed neural network framework to learn non-local macroscopic traffic flow models from CAV trajectories, capturing upstream and downstream effects more accurately than local models.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to directly learn non-local traffic flow models from microscopic CAV data, bridging micro-macro modeling gaps with physics-informed neural networks.

Findings

Learned non-local models outperform local models in predicting CAV traffic dynamics.

Non-local kernels are mainly shaped by control parameters, affecting traffic flow.

Fundamental diagrams show less scatter, indicating more consistent speed-density relations.

Abstract

Connected automated vehicles (CAVs) cruising control strategies have been extensively studied at the microscopic level. CAV controllers sense and react to traffic both upstream and downstream, yet most macroscopic models still assume locality, where the desired speed only depends on local density. The nonlocal macroscopic traffic flow models that explicitly capture the ``look ahead'' and ``look behind'' nonlocal CAV dynamics remain underexplored. In this paper, we propose a Physics-informed Neural Network framework to directly learn a macroscopic non-local flow model from a generic looking-ahead looking-behind vehicle motion model, which bridges the micro-macro modeling gap. We reconstruct macroscopic traffic states from synthetic CAV trajectories generated by the proposed microscopic control designs, and then learn a non-local traffic flow model that embeds a non-local conservation law to capture the resulting look-ahead look-behind dynamics. To analyze how CAV control parameters affect nonlocal traffic flow, we conduct high-fidelity driving simulator experiments to collect human drivers' trajectory data with varying downstream and upstream visibility, which serves as a baseline for tuning CAV control gains. Our analysis validates that the learned non-local flow model predicts CAV traffic dynamics more accurately than local models, and the fundamental diagram exhibits far less scatter in the speed - density relation. We further show that the looking-ahead/looking-behind control gains mainly reshape the non-local kernels, while the macroscopic speed and non-local density relation mainly depends on the desired speed function choice of the CAV controller. Our results provide a systematic approach for learning non-local macroscopic traffic-flow models directly from generic CAV control designs.