Anisotropy safety potential field model under intelligent and connected vehicle environment and its application in car-following modeling

Potential field theory, as a theory that can also be applied to vehicle control, is an emerging risk quantification approach to accommodate the connected and self-driving vehicle environment. Vehicles have different risk impact effects on other road participants in each direction under the influence of road rules. This variability exhibited by vehicles in each direction is not considered in the previous potential field model. Therefore, this paper proposed a potential field model that takes the anisotropy of vehicle impact into account: (1) introducing equivalent distances to separate the potential field area in the different directions before and after the vehicle; (2) introducing co-virtual forces to characterize the effect of the side-by-side travel phenomenon on vehicle car-following travel; (3) introducing target forces and lane resistance, which regress the control of desired speed to control the acceptable risk of drivers. The Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) dataset is used in this study to create the model's initial parameter values based on the artificial swarm algorithm. The simulation findings indicate that when the vehicle is given the capacity to perceive the surrounding traffic environment, the suggested the anisotropic safety potential field model (ASPFM) performs better in terms of driving safety.