Traffic Control and the C4C Project

The motorway traffic flow on the Amsterdam ring network 
improves with the C4C Project. 
To decrease traffic congestion and 
to facilitate a smooth traffic flow
the Traffic Control Centers of Rijkswaterstaat 
(the motorway authority) and 
of the City of Amsterdam 
apply software of the company Trinit\'{e} and 
mathematics developed in the C4C project.
The extensive road network, 80 x 50 km, is controlled by software 
which is based on a mathematical model, 
and uses control of a hierarchical-distributed system.
The scenario coordination module allows road operators
to evaluate the interactions of the different control measures
like speed control, ramp metering, and routing advisories.
That module was evaluated including interviews with operators
and the outcome was very positive.
The EU-sponsored and CWI-coordinated research project 
Control for Coordination of Distributed Systems (C4C)
ends on 31 August 2011
with results for case studies and for theory 
that are both highly valuable to the European Union countries.

Results for the case studies of the C4C Project 
include control of underwater vehicles,
the automatic transportation of containers on a terminal,
and control of complex machines.
Autonomous underwater vehicles at the University of Porto
were able to follow online specified paths and demonstrate
cooperation. 
These vehicles were produced by the company Oceanscan.
For formation flying of groups of vehicles, 
algorithms were developed and tested.
For the efficient transportation of containers from
the quay to a container yard 
on the container terminal of PSA Antwerp,
algorithms were formulated for several circumstances and 
shown to be effective, 
nonblocking (two parts of the system do not block each other), 
and efficient.
Supervisory control was developed
for high-quality printers of the Oc\'{e} Technologies company
to control the operation of the machines.

The C4C Case Studies described above lead to problems
of mathematics and of computer science.
Coordination control of distributed systems
is needed to control the joint operation of the
different parts of the road network mentioned above,
the different vehicles underwater or on the container terminal, etc.
The objectives are to operate the distributed subsystems
such that they achieve a common task and do not interfere
with each other.
The interaction of the subsystems in a distributed system
is handled by a subsystem called the coordinator.
Research issues of coordination control
include the construction of a coordinator,
the minimality of a coordinator,
and how to synthesize controllers for the subsystems.
The software package Ariadne provides computer programs
that approximate reachable sets of hybrid systems
based on the mathematically-rigorous theory of computable analysis.
To allow researchers with computer models
to use efficiently several software packages,
other computer programs were further developed 
which convert the data of a model
from the format of one program to that of another program
(Common Interchange Format).

Contact Jan H. van Schuppen 
(project coordinator; J.H.van.Schuppen@cwi.nl)
and check the website www.c4c-project.eu
for further information about the C4C Project.
The participants of the project are: 
the research institutes
CWI (Amsterdam) and the 
Center for Research & Technology - Thessaly (Volos, Greece);
the Delft and the Eindhoven Universities of Technology
(both The Netherlands);
the Universities of Cyprus, Gent, Porto, and Verona;
and the companies
Oceanscan - Marine Systems & Technology (Porto, Portugal),
PSA Antwerp (Antwerp, Belgium; formerly Hesse-Noord Natie),
Oc\'{e} Technologies B.V. (Venlo, The Netherlands), and
Trinit\'{e} Automation B.V. (Uithoorn, The Netherlands).