Estimation of flow and density using probe vehicles with spacing measurement equipment

•We developed a probe vehicle-based estimation method of traffic states.•Spacing was supposed to be measured by advanced driver assistance systems.•The method does not rely on exogenous assumptions on traffic flow characteristics.•We performed a field experiment at a real world urban expressway for validation.•We quantified characteristics of the method such as estimation precision.

Probe vehicles provide some of the most useful data for road traffic monitoring because they can acquire wide-ranging and spatiotemporally detailed information at a relatively low cost compared with traditional fixed-point observation. However, current GPS-equipped probe vehicles cannot directly provide us volume-related variables such as flow and density. In this paper, we propose a new probe vehicle-based estimation method for obtaining volume-related variables by assuming that a probe vehicle can measure the spacing to its leading one. This assumption can be realized by utilizing key technologies in advanced driver assistance systems that are expected to spread in the near future. We developed a method of estimating the flow, density, and speed from the probe vehicle data without exogenous assumptions on traffic flow characteristics, such as a fundamental diagram. In order to quantify the characteristics of the method, we performed a field experiment at a real-world urban expressway by employing prototypes of the probe vehicles with spacing measurement equipment. The result showed that the proposed method could accurately estimate the 5 min and hourly traffic volumes with probe vehicle penetration rate of 3.5% and 0.2%, respectively.