RESEARCH ON THE MODIFIED CELLULAR AUTOMATON MODEL OF TRAFFIC NETWORKS AND THE SELF-ORGANIZATION PHENOMENON IN TRAFFIC SYSTEMS

A cellular automaton (CA) is a discrete-time discrete-space dynamic system model. The idea of using Cellular Automata to simulate traffic systems originated in 1992. The advantages of the BML model proposed by Biham, Middleton and Levine are that the modeling method is simple and that it can realize the parallel computation. But the BML model may not tally with the actual situations. In order for BML to deal with more practical situations, we propose the modified BML model, which consists of three elements—the sections of roads, intersections and vehicle density. A bidirectional road single lane on each direction is characterized as a certain number of positions. The vehicle density of each position is set at one of the 3 levels. The traffic light is also set for control on the traffic network. Based on the modified BML model, the dynamic process of self-organization phenomenon of traffic system is analyzed and simulated.