arXiv subjects

Roberto Horowitz

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto Horowitz.

45 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

A Dynamic-System-Based Approach to Modeling Driver Movements Across General-Purpose/Managed Lane Interfaces

To help mitigate road congestion caused by the unrelenting growth of traffic demand, many transportation authorities have implemented managed lane policies, which restrict certain freeway lanes to certain types of vehicles. It was originally thought that managed lanes would improve the use of existing infrastructure through demand-management behaviors like carpooling, but implementations have often been characterized by unpredicted phenomena that are sometimes detrimental to system performance. The development of traffic models that can capture these sorts of behaviors is a key step for helping managed lanes deliver on their promised gains. Towards this goal, this paper presents an approach for solving for driver behavior of entering and exiting managed lanes at the macroscopic (i.e., fluid approximation of traffic) scale. Our method is inspired by recent work in extending a dynamic-system-based modeling framework from traffic behaviors on individual roads, to models at junctions, and can be considered a further extension of this dynamic-system paradigm to the route/lane choice problem. Unlike traditional route choice models that are often based on discrete-choice methods and often rely on computing and comparing drivers' estimated travel times from taking different routes, our method is agnostic to the particular choice of physical traffic model and is suited specifically towards making decisions at these interfaces using only local information. These features make it a natural drop-in component to extend existing dynamic traffic modeling methods.

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arXiv2018

Mixed H2/H-infinity Data-Driven Control Design for Hard Disk Drives

A frequency based data-driven control design considering mixed H2/H-infinity control objectives is developed for multiple input-single output systems. The main advantage of the data-driven control over the model-based control is its ability to use the frequency response measurements of the controlled plant directly without the need to identify a model for the plant. In the proposed methodology, multiple sets of measurements can be considered in the design process to accommodate variations in the system dynamics. The controller is obtained by translating the mixed H2/H-infinity control objectives into a convex optimization problem. The H-infinity norm is used to shape closed loop transfer functions and guarantee closed loop stability, while the H2 norm is used to constrain and/or minimize the variance of signals in the time domain. The proposed data-driven design methodology is used to design a track following controller for a dual-stage HDD. The sensitivity decoupling structure[16] is considered as the controller structure. The compensators inside this controller structure are designed and compared by decoupling the system into two single input-single-output systems as well as solving for a single input-double output controller.

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arXiv2017

Particle-Filter-Enabled Real-Time Sensor Fault Detection Without a Model of Faults

We are experiencing an explosion in the amount of sensors measuring our activities and the world around us. These sensors are spread throughout the built environment and can help us perform state estimation and control of related systems, but they are often built and/or maintained by third parties or system users. As a result, by outsourcing system measurement to third parties, the controller must accept their measurements without being able to directly verify the sensors' correct operation. Instead, detection and rejection of measurements from faulty sensors must be done with the raw data only. Towards this goal, we present a method of detecting possibly faulty behavior of sensors. The method does not require that the control designer have any model of faulty sensor behavior. As we discuss, it turns out that the widely-used particle filter state estimation algorithm provides the ingredients necessary for a hypothesis test against all ranges of correct operating behavior, obviating the need for a fault model to compare measurements. We demonstrate the applicability of our method by demonstrating its ability to reject faulty measurements and improve state estimation accuracy in a nonlinear vehicle traffic model without information of generated faulty measurements' characteristics. In our test, we correctly identify nearly 90% of measurements as faulty or non-faulty without having any fault model. This leads to only a 3% increase in state estimation error over a theoretical 100%-accurate fault detector.

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arXiv2017

On node models for high-dimensional road networks

Macroscopic traffic models are necessary for simulation and study of traffic's complex macro-scale dynamics, and are often used by practitioners for road network planning, integrated corridor management, and other applications. These models have two parts: a link model, which describes traffic flow behavior on individual roads, and a node model, which describes behavior at road junctions. As the road networks under study become larger and more complex --- nowadays often including arterial networks --- the node model becomes more important. This paper focuses on the first order node model and has two main contributions. First, we formalize the multi-commodity flow distribution at a junction as an optimization problem with all the necessary constraints. Most interesting here is the formalization of input flow priorities. Then, we discuss a very common "conservation of turning fractions" or "first-in-first-out" (FIFO) constraint, and how it often produces unrealistic spillback. This spillback occurs when, at a diverge, a queue develops for a movement that only a few lanes service, but FIFO requires that all lanes experience spillback from this queue. As we show, avoiding this unrealistic spillback while retaining FIFO in the node model requires complicated network topologies. Our second contribution is a "partial FIFO" mechanism that avoids this unrealistic spillback, and a node model and solution algorithm that incorporates this mechanism. The partial FIFO mechanism is parameterized through intervals that describe how individual movements influence each other, can be intuitively described from physical lane geometry and turning movement rules, and allows tuning to describe a link as having anything between full FIFO and no FIFO. Excepting the FIFO constraint, the present node model also fits within the well-established "general class of first-order node models" for multi-commodity flows.

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arXiv2016

A dynamic system characterization of road network node models

The propagation of traffic congestion along roads is a commonplace nonlinear phenomenon. When many roads are connected in a network, congestion can spill from one road to others as drivers queue to enter a congested road, creating further nonlinearities in the network dynamics. This paper considers the node model problem, which refers to methods for solving for cross-flows when roads meet at a junction. We present a simple hybrid dynamic system that, given a macroscopic snapshot of the roads entering and exiting a node, intuitively models the node's throughflows over time. This dynamic system produces solutions to the node model problem that are equal to those produced by many popular node models without intuitive physical meanings. We also show how the earlier node models can be rederived as executions of our dynamic system. The intuitive physical description supplied by our system provides a base for control of the road junction system dynamics, as well as the emergent network dynamics.

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arXiv2016

Fusing Loop and GPS Probe Measurements to Estimate Freeway Density

In an age of ever-increasing penetration of GPS-enabled mobile devices, the potential of real-time "probe" location information for estimating the state of transportation networks is receiving increasing attention. Much work has been done on using probe data to estimate the current speed of vehicle traffic (or equivalently, trip travel time). While travel times are useful to individual drivers, the state variable for a large class of traffic models and control algorithms is vehicle density. Our goal is to use probe data to supplement traditional, fixed-location loop detector data for density estimation. To this end, we derive a method based on Rao-Blackwellized particle filters, a sequential Monte Carlo scheme. We present a simulation where we obtain a 30\% reduction in density mean absolute percentage error from fusing loop and probe data, vs. using loop data alone. We also present results using real data from a 19-mile freeway section in Los Angeles, California, where we obtain a 31\% reduction. In addition, our method's estimate when using only the real-world probe data, and no loop data, outperformed the estimate produced when only loop data were used (an 18\% reduction). These results demonstrate that probe data can be used for traffic density estimation.

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arXiv2016

DSP Implementation of a Direct Adaptive Feedfoward Control Algorithm for Rejecting Repeatable Runout in Hard Disk Drives

A direct adaptive feedforward control method for tracking repeatable runout (RRO) in bit patterned media recording (BPMR) hard disk drives (HDD) is proposed. The technique estimates the system parameters and the residual RRO simultaneously and constructs a feedforward signal based on a known regressor. An improved version of the proposed algorithm to avoid matrix inversion and reduce computation complexity is given. Results for both MATLAB simulation and digital signal processor (DSP) implementation are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

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arXiv2016

Adaptive Rejection of Periodic Disturbances Acting on Linear Systems with Unknown Dynamics

This paper proposes a novel direct adaptive control method for rejecting unknown deterministic disturbances and tracking unknown trajectories in systems with uncertain dynamics when the disturbances or trajectories are the summation of multiple sinusoids with known frequencies, such as periodic profiles or disturbances. The proposed algorithm does not require a model of the plant dynamics and does not use batches of measurements in the adaptation process. Moreover, it is applicable to both minimum and non-minimum phase plants. The algorithm is a "direct" adaptive method, in the sense that the identification of system parameters and the control design are performed simultaneously. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an add-on controller is designed and implemented in the servo system of a hard disk drive to track unknown nano-scale periodic trajectories.

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arXiv2015

A new model for multi-commodity macroscopic modeling of complex traffic networks

We propose a macroscopic modeling framework for a network of roads and multi-commodity traffic. The proposed framework is based on the Lighthill-Whitham-Richards kinematic wave theory; more precisely, on its discretization, the Cell Transmission Model (CTM), adapted for networks and multi-commodity traffic. The resulting model is called the Link-Node CTM (LNCTM). In the LNCTM, we use the fundamental diagram of an "inverse lambda" shape that allows modeling of the capacity drop and the hysteresis behavior of the traffic state in a link that goes from free flow to congestion and back. A model of the node with multiple input and multiple output links accepting multi-commodity traffic is a cornerstone of the LNCTM. We present the multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) node model for multi-commodity traffic that supersedes previously developed node models. The analysis and comparison with previous node models are provided. Sometimes, certain traffic commodities may choose between multiple output links in a node based on the current traffic state of the node's input and output links. For such situations, we propose a local traffic assignment algorithm that computes how incoming traffic of a certain commodity should be distributed between output links, if this information is not known a priori.

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