Extending SUMO for Lane-Free Microscopic Simulation of Connected and Automated Vehicles

This paper presents some new developments related to TrafficFluid-Sim, a lane-free microscopic simulator that extends the SUMO simulation infrastructure to model lane-free traffic environments, allowing vehicles to be located at any lateral position, disregarding standard notions of car-following and lane-change maneuvers that are typically embedded within a (lanebased) simulator. A dynamic library has been designed for traffic monitoring and lane-free vehicle movement control, one that does not impose any inter-tool “communication” delays that standard practices with the TraCI module introduce; and enables the emulation of vehicleto-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. We first summarize the various core components that constitute our simulator, and then discuss the new capability to utilize the bicycle kinematic model, additionally to the usual double-integrator model, as a more realistic model of vehicle movement dynamics, particularly for a lane-free traffic environment. Finally, we developed the necessary components so that the bicycle model can alternatively be combined with the use of global coordinates for more realistic simulation in road networks with curvature, such as roundabouts.