Abstract

Microscopic models of driver behavior are extremely important in the field of traffic sciences. In the literature, there is a severe lack of microscopic models (which can incorporate the various traffic and roadway features which a driver faces while driving in a traffic stream) possibly due to the complexity involved. Recently, an attempt to develop a microscopic model based on the potential field theory of robot motion planning was made which seems to have the potential to model the driver behavior in presence of variety of traffic and roadway features. However, the existing potential field theory based model is very preliminary and the interaction of driver with other moving vehicles is not covered. Hence, in this thesis, a more generalized potential field theory based model is developed to handle the driver behavior in the presence of other moving vehicles. The results suggest that the proposed model works well.