Premature seizure of traffic flow due to the introduction of evolutionary games

Abstract

We study the impact of evolutionary games on the flow of traffic. Since traffic participants do not always conform to the imposed rules, the introduction of games, i.e. set of strategies defining the behavioural pattern of agents on the road, appears justified. With this motivation, and the fact that individuals can change their strategy in the course of time, the evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game is introduced between neighbouring agents, enabling them to choose between cooperation and defection. Mutual cooperation enables forwarding to both agents for one step, while the defector is able to advance two steps when facing a cooperator, whereby the latter is forced to go one step backwards. Two defectors end up in a halt until the next iteration. Irrespective of their strategy, however, agents can move only if the road ahead is free. Jumps are never allowed. We show that this simple and plausible supplementation of the discrete cellular automaton Biham-Middleton-Levine (BML) model induces a traffic flow seizure by a substantially lower initial density of cars as in the absence of evolutionary games. The phenomenon is explained by studying the one-dimensional variant of the BML model with different advancement steps on the circular ring. In view of the proposed explanation, findings are generalized also to other types of games, such is the snowdrift game, and some statistical properties of gridlock formation in the presence of evolutionary rules are outlined. Our findings suggest that 'bending the law' results in a premature occurrence of traffic jams and thus unnecessarily burdens the transportation system.

Keywords

dinamični sistemi;ekscitabilni sistemi;teorija iger;pretok prometa;simulacije pretoka;ne zaključna dela;dynamic systems;traffic flow;theory of games;evolutionary rules;flow simulations;prisoner's dilemma;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2007
Typology:	1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization:	UM - University of Maribor
UDC:	519.83
COBISS:	15227912
ISSN:	1367-2630
Views:	298
Downloads:	0
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
Metadata:

Other data

Secondary language:	English
Secondary keywords:	Matematika;Teorija iger;
URN:	URN:SI:UM:
Type (COBISS):	Article
Pages:	str. 1-17
Volume:	ǂVol. ǂ9
Issue:	3
Chronology:	Jan. 2007
DOI:	10.1088/1367-2630/9/1/003
ID:	10846204