AN AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEM SIMULATOR

SmartPath is simulation package for an automated highway system (AHS). The program may be used to understand how an AHS would perform under various control policies in terms of highway capacity, traffic flow, a nd other performance measures of interest to transportation system pla nners and engineers. SmartPath also can be used to test, simulate, and evaluate the performance of the designs of different modules and inst rumentations like engine models, sensors, and communications. The pack age consists of two separate modules: simulation and animation. The an imation program runs on Silicon Graphics workstations and the simulati on runs on Sun Sparc or Silicon Graphics workstations. The animation p rogram produces a three-dimensional color animation of AHS traffic. Sm artPath is a microsimulation: the system elements and the control poli cies are each individually modeled. The control policies are, for the most part, parametrically specified, so users can study the performanc e variations by changing the specifications. In this paper, we discuss the modeling of the basic elements of SmartPath. We describe the orga nization of these elements in the simulation and the assumptions under lying the design, such as availability of certain communication infras tructure and appropriate sensors. We also summarize SmartPath's comput ational performance.