Analysis of Intelligent Transportation Systems Using Model-Driven Simulations

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) integrate information, sensor, control, and communication technologies to provide transport related services. Their users range from everyday commuters to policy makers and urban planners. Given the complexity of these systems and their environment, their study in real settings is frequently unfeasible. Simulations help to address this problem, but present their own issues: there can be unintended mistakes in the transition from models to code; their platforms frequently bias modeling; and it is difficult to compare works that use different models and tools. In order to overcome these problems, this paper proposes a framework for a model-driven development of these simulations. It is based on a specific modeling language that supports the integrated specification of the multiple facets of an ITS: people, their vehicles, and the external environment; and a network of sensors and actuators conveniently arranged and distributed that operates over them. The framework works with a model editor to generate specifications compliant with that language, and a code generator to produce code from them using platform specifications. There are also guidelines to help researchers in the application of this infrastructure. A case study on advanced management of traffic lights with cameras illustrates its use.

Simulation of Road Traffic Applying Model-Driven Engineering

Road traffic is an important phenomenon in modern societies. The study of its different aspects in the multiple scenarios where it happens is relevant for a huge number of problems. At the same time, its scale and complexity make it hard to study. Traffic simulations can alleviate these difficulties, simplifying the scenarios to consider and controlling their variables. However, their development also presents difficulties. The main ones come from the need to integrate the way of working of researchers and developers from multiple fields. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) addresses these problems using Modelling Languages (MLs) and semi-automatic transformations to organise and describe the development, from requirements to code. This paper presents a domain-specific MDE framework for simulations of road traffic. It comprises an extensible ML, support tools, and development guidelines. The ML adopts an agent-based approach, which is focused on the roles of individuals in road traffic and their decision-making. A case study shows the process to model a traffic theory with the ML, and how to specialise that specification for an existing target platform and its simulations. The results are the basis for comparison with related work.

A multi-agent system architecture for sensor networks

The design of the control systems for sensor networks presents important challenges. Besides the traditional problems about how to process the sensor data to obtain the target information, engineers need to consider additional aspects such as the heterogeneity and high number of sensors, and the flexibility of these networks regarding topologies and the sensors in them. Although there are partial approaches for resolving these issues, their integration relies on ad hoc solutions requiring important development efforts. In order to provide an effective approach for this integration, this paper proposes an architecture based on the multi-agent system paradigm with a clear separation of concerns. The architecture considers sensors as devices used by an upper layer of manager agents. These agents are able to communicate and negotiate services to achieve the required functionality. Activities are organized according to roles related with the different aspects to integrate, mainly sensor management, data processing, communication and adaptation to changes in the available devices and their capabilities. This organization largely isolates and decouples the data management from the changing network, while encouraging reuse of solutions. The use of the architecture is facilitated by a specific modelling language developed through metamodelling. A case study concerning a generic distributed system for fire fighting illustrates the approach and the comparison with related work.