Traffic Control Test Bed: An open source benchmarking platform for intersection control systems

Recent developments in wireless communication, artificial intelligence and sensor
construction present researchers of transportation systems with an unprecedented
opportunity to explore new approaches towards the development of novel intersection
management systems. Due to the lack of freely accessible software tools, these systems are
often implemented and tested over custom-built network models. This in turn makes the
evaluation results of these systems difficult to compare.

To overcome this issue, in this paper, we present Traffic Control Test Bed (TCTB), an open-
source simulation platform for evaluating intersection control systems. The platform consists
of four components: A road network database including both synthetic and real-world
examples, a set of traffic demand specifications, a library of intersection control
systems/algorithms, and a set of software APIs developed to execute simulations within the
context of the test bed. The test bed is built on the open source microsimulation software
SUMO. As well as being an arena for traffic control algorithms, the open-source property of
the platform also invite contributions from the wider research community to improve
execution validity and efficiency. We conclude the paper with a case study of a road section
in central Milton Keynes to demonstrate the usage of TCTB.