Project: Traffic Jam with Python

The project tries to simulate a traffic jam. The simulation starts cars with certain speed and based on the distance between them the accleration changes to maintain a safe distance. This should creates a simulation of traffic jam. Following are some basic planning on the different objects and their relationships.

Getting Started

To run the simulation cd into trafficjam/source/ directory and then run

python ./traffic_jam.py

• source/traffic_jam.py contains code to initialise the program, including the initial positions of the cars and their velocity.
• source/car.py contains the logic of the cars; how they accelerate or slow down in reaction to the cars surrounding them.
• source/road.py controls the flow of the simulation.

To then analyse the data and show the animation, run

python ./plotting.py

Configure the simulation

Simulation parameters

• n_cars: number of cars in the simulation
• n_timesteps: number of timesteps to take in simulation
• car_spread: the distance between the first and last car in the starting grid

Car parameters

• max_velocity: the desired velocity of the car
• safe_distance: the distance that the car will try and maintain from the car in front.