A bilevel programming model for autonomous intersection control and trajectory planning

Advances in autonomous and connected vehicles bring new opportunities for intelligent intersection control strategies. In this paper, we propose a centralised way to jointly integrate an intersection control problem with vehicle trajectory planning. It is formulated as a bilevel optimisation problem in which the upper level is designed to minimise the total travel time by a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model. In contrast, the lower level is a linear programming (LP) model with an objective function to maximise the total speed entering the intersection. The two levels are coupled by the arrival time and terminal speed. By using the relationship between the safe time headway and the process time, a novel platoon-based method is developed to reduce the computational burden. Finally, simulation tests are carried out to investigate the control performance under different demands, intersection lengths, communication ranges and traffic compositions.