Founder: Luxembourg’s National Research Fund (FNR)
Start date: 01/07/2017
End date : 30/06/2020

The project exploits the potentials of the new Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) paradigm to meet the requirements of the next generation Public Transport (PT) systems. Such systems put an emphasis on green vehicles, increased comfort, and operating costs reduction. However, they introduce additional complexity—for instance electric buses need to periodically recharge their batteries on-route using dedicated infrastructure. This not only can impact service level, but also extend operating costs with complex electric charges. In this project we argue that the aforementioned requirements—unsupported by current control methods—can be met by introducing new strategies explicitly optimising the interactions within the PT ecosystem components consisting of PT vehicles, traffic signals, and electric bus charging infrastructure. The main novelty of eCoBus is that these strategies combine cooperation and negotiation within the whole PT ecosystem, enabled by C-ITS connectivity. To achieve these goals, we mainly rely on vehicle control rather than on the use of prioritised treatment at traffic signals, which in busy urban scenarios can have negative impacts on overall traffic. The main research challenges are in formulating and solving complex multi-objective optimisation problems involving game-theoretical aspects.

Principal investigator:

• Francesco Viti