Research on Ramp Merging Control of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles on Highways

In an intelligent connected traffic environment, a method is proposed to optimize multi-lane vehicle merging in highway entrance ramp areas, aiming to reduce traffic congestion and high energy consumption caused by lane competition.First, a ramp merging scenario is constructed based on the highway entrance environment and vehicle operating conditions. The problem is then formulated accordingly. Next, the simulated annealing algorithm is used to optimize the merging sequence by considering different energy consumption models and driving comfort. Finally, an optimal control method is applied to plan vehicle trajectories based on vehicle states and a cost function.Comparative experiments are conducted with two other merging methods. The simulation results show that, compared to Merging Method 1, the proposed method reduces total energy consumption by 13.1% and decreases cumulative comfort cost by 18.07%. Compared to Merging Method 2, total energy consumption is reduced by 20.51%, while cumulative comfort cost decreases by 23.3%. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ramp merging optimization method.