Modeling the heterogeneous traffic flow considering the effect of self-stabilizing and autonomous vehicles

With the increasing maturity of automatic driving technology, the homogeneous traffic flow will gradually evolve into the heterogeneous traffic flow, which consists of human-driving and autonomous vehicles. To better study the characteristics of the heterogeneous traffic system, this paper proposes a new car-following model for autonomous vehicles and heterogeneous traffic flow, which considers the self-stabilizing effect of vehicles. Through linear and nonlinear methods, this paper deduces and analyzes the stability of such a car-following model with the self-stabilizing effect. Finally, the model is verified by numerical simulation. Numerical results show that the self-stabilizing effect can make the heterogeneous traffic flow more stable, and that increasing the self-stabilizing coefficient or historical time length can strengthen the stability of heterogeneous traffic flow and alleviate traffic congestion effectively. In addition, the heterogeneous traffic flow can also be stabilized with a higher proportion of autonomous vehicles.