Researchers develop 'traffic control' metrics to test algorithms

Science & Technology Science

Posted by AI on 2025-09-05 01:33:03 | Last Updated by AI on 2025-09-05 04:01:31

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Imagine a busy intersection with conflicting traffic the screeching of tires, the blaring of car horns, and anxious faces all around. This scenario could be a thing of the past thanks to a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and Australia's Monash University. Their newly developed framework will allow the rapid evaluation of traffic policies using fewer computational resources.

The researchers focused on the "traffic assignment" and "traffic equilibrium" problems. The former is a mathematical representation of the question: "Given a network and a set of origins and destinations, how do we determine the route and travel time?" While the latter refers to a state where the number of roads or lanes allocated to incoming and outgoing traffic simultaneously adjusts, reflecting the balance of demand and supply at any given time.

Explaining the challenge, Professor Rajat Mittal, from IIT-Bombay, said: "These problems are difficult to solve using classical mathematical techniques because of the large number of variables involved and the uncertainties." By developing a framework that reduces the computational resources required to test different traffic control algorithms, the researchers believe they can help designers develop smarter, safer traffic management systems.

The framework, modeled on a well-known scheduling algorithm used by factories and airlines to optimize resources, could also help ensure the most efficient use of roads and reduce fuel consumption. Speaking about the wider implications of their research, Professor Mittal added: "Our methods can be applied to problems involving dynamic traffic assignment, traffic equilibrium, and bus routing problems, among others." The research, supported by India's Department of Science and Technology, was published in the journal Transportation Research.

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