A Dynamic Game Formulation for Cooperative Lane Change Strategies at Highway Merges

Abstract

A dynamic game framework is put forward to derive the system optimum strategy for a network of cooperative vehicles interacting at a merging bottleneck with simplified vehicle dynamics model. Merging vehicles minimize the distance travelled on the acceleration lane in addition to the same cost terms of the mainline vehicles, taking into account the predicted reaction of mainline vehicles to their merging actions. An optimum strategy is found by minimizing the joint cost of all interacting vehicles while respecting behavioral and physical constraints. The full dynamic game is cast as a set of sub-problems regularly expressed as standard optimal control problems that can be solved efficiently. Numerical examples show the feasibility of the approach in capturing the nature of conflict and cooperation during the merging process.