Challenges
The UK Technology Strategy Board and the Highways Agency submitted a SBRI requesting the development of innovative methods to train traffic controllers using simulation in an operational environment. Ambient Performance (Lead), MASA Group and Coram UK collaborated on the 6 month response to the SBRI call from the Technology Strategy Board and the Highways Agency for Synthetic Environments in Managed Motorways to explore the use of synthetic environments applied to transport, in this case, modelling and managing complex traffic situations on motorways.
The project entitled TRAF*MAN - The Visual Interactive & Intelligent Highway Management Simulation System creates an immersive synthetic visual environment for modelling and managing complex situations on motorways. The innovative aim of TRAF*MAN is to merge historical highways data with autonomous ‘virtual drivers’ whose dynamic decision making is in response to real time triggers – signage, queues, blockages, opening or closing of the hard shoulder – all presented in the immersive visual environment.
The prime focus of the simulation was the behaviors of the two main human elements in the system, operators in Regional Control Centres and the virtual drivers on the highway. Operators required intuitive real-time control mechanisms to interact with the simulation, and the virtual drivers of the simulation needed to be highly realistic, dynamic and adaptive to changes made during the operational exercise.
“One of the keys to adoption of new simulations is end-user trust. Trust is gained when simulation accurately reflects and behaves like their real world environment and that it feels like it was designed to support their work processes. Working with MASA Group has ensured that the automated vehicles have believable real world behaviors and Coram UK have ensured usability and design consistent with Highways Agency needs as they have been building solutions with them for years. Masa has done an outstanding job of working closely with Ambient’s technical team and engineers at SAIC to rapidly further integrate platforms and extend capabilities. The end result is an easily deployable decision support and training system which can scale to meet national demand and easily include mult-agency and multi-level exercising capabilities for additional benefits and return on investment.”
Ron Edwards, CEO, Ambient Performance
Solution
Traf*man a multiplayer simulation environment used to train traffic controllers in an operational environment in Regional Control Centers of the Highways Agency. Capabilities include real-time operational training, analysis and post exercise review of operations.
Traffic Generation & Control Interface. For simulation Traf*man has a traffic generation and control interface that allows non technical users to create and parameterize virtual drivers with complex behaviours.
Multiplayer simulation. For operations Traf*man allows for multiplayer simulation that may be hosted over the web for large exercise management including an intuitive user interface for operators to inject real-time simulation changes such as lane closures or speed limit changes.
Uses
- Standalone traffic modelling & simulation
- Operations procedure development, simulation & training
- Real-time operational training environment
- Modeling of motorway ergonomics
Benefits
- A dynamic and adaptive synthetic simulation environment that can reduce costs in simulating exercises around incident management
- Users can record and re-play scenarios so speeding the learning process as learners can review their input in a scenario
- Web-accessible service allowing many players to participate concurrently without being physically constrained to a specific intranet
Downloads
TRAF*MAN project presentation video