Driving simulators provide a safe testing environment for reactions of human drivers in traffic. Traffic simulations traditionally focus on deducing infrastructure efficiency mea- sures. Both types of simulation model similar aspects but differ in scale and detail. They mostly target different research domains, too, like psychologists, automotive or traffic engi- neers. Current traffic studies tend to simplify driving assistance systems a lot. As those get developed further, interdisciplinary collaboration may help to model their impact on the traffic system. A short literature overview of simulation couplings in this field, their appli- cations and challenges is given. In this work, a coupling mechanism is being developed to run the driving simulation SILAB and the microscopic traffic simulation SUMO in parallel. Components include a mutual traffic participant exchange, traffic light states transfer, and an automatic road network converter. Here, the technical concept of a closed loop as well as the planned application are presented. The human-driven car from SILAB is placed into SUMO and makes the other vehicles react, and vice versa: SUMO-controlled vehi- cles act as surrounding traffic in SILAB. Firstly, this facilitates the driving simulation of urban road networks with many random traffic participants. Secondly, microscopic traffic simulation may profit from the insights gained from the test persons driving in SILAB.
Investigating the impacts of urban speed limit reduction through microscopic traffic simulation
