AIM4 User Guide

This document helps users to understand the user interface of the AIM4 simulator and learn how to start and control simulations in the simulator. In Section 1, we discuss how to set up a simulation in which all intersections are controlled by the AIM protocol. In Section 2, we present the set up of a simulation in which all intersections use traffic signals. In Section 3, we present how to run a simulation in which stop signs are used. In Section 4, we present the elements in the user interface for controlling simulations.

1. Choosing a Simulation Setup Screen

When you start the simulator, you should see the following window:
This window is the setup screen for configuring a simulation in which all intersections are controlled by the AIM protocol. On the top of this setup screen, there is a pull down menu. On the pull down menu, you can choose other setup screens. For instance, if you choose "Traffic Signals", you will see the following screen:
This is the setup screen for the configuring a simulation in which all intersection controls are traffic signals. Likewise, if you choose "Stop signs", you will see the following setup screen:
This is the setup screen for simulation in which all intersection controls are stop signs. Currently the setup screen for stop signs "controller" does not have any settings.

2. Simulations with the AIM Protocol

Now let us go to the setup screen for the AIM protocol only settings by choosing the "AIM Protocol" in the pull down menu:
On this setup screen, you will see a number of simulation parameters: After adjusting the simulation parameters, press the Start button at the lower left corner of the window to start the simulation. For example, to start a simulation with a map consists of a 3 × 3 intersections, set the number of north-bound/south-bound roads to 3 and the number of east-bound/west-bound roads to 3. Press the Start button and you will then see the following screen.

Understanding the Simulation Screen

Suppose you started a simulation with only one intersection:
In this screen, vehicles are spawned at the spawn points at the edge of the screen. The rate at which vehicles are spawned at the spawn points are determined by the traffic level at the screen. At the top left corner of the screen is the current simulation time, which is the amount of time the simulation has passed since the beginning of the simulation. The initial simulation time is 0 and it increases at an increment of 0.02 second by default. Notice that a simulation second is not the same as a second in real life, and this allows the simulation runs at a much faster speed. The speed of the simulation can be adjusted in the control panel at the bottom of the screen. We will discuss the control panel in detail in Section 5. The color of a vehicle indicates the state of the reservation of the vehicle: The white lines near the beginning and the end of the roads in the map are the data collection lines, which are used to collect the data about the vehicles. Whenever a vehicle passes through a data collection line, the VIN of the vehicle, in conjunction with the time at which the vehicle crossing the line, will be recorded. Users can export these data to a file by choosing Dump Data Collection Lines' Data in the menu bar. We will talk about the menu bar in Section 5.

3. Simulations with Traffic Signals

Now press the Escape key to go back to the setup screen, and then choose "Traffic Signals" in the pull down menu. We will see the following setup screen:
On this setup screen, there are some simulation parameters for simulations in which all intersections are controlled by traffic signals. Currently, only one intersection is allowed in this setup with traffic signals. Press the Start button and the simulation screen appears:
The traffic signal in the simulation is a six-phase traffic signals with two protected left-turn phases. Also, vehicles can make a right-turn at any time. As can be seen, there are traffic signals at all incoming lanes of the intersection. There are three different traffic signals: green, yellow and red. The duration of the green and yellow signals are determined by the chosen values in the setup screen. The duration of the red signal is equal to the sum of the duration of the green signal and the duration of the yellow signal. All vehicles in this simulation are yellow and the color has no special meaning, as there is no need to indicate the reservation status.

4. Simulations with Stop Signs

Let us try out the setup for stop signs by pressing the Escape key and then choose "Stop Signs" in the pull down menu. We will see the following setup screen:
Currently, there is no parameters for simulations with stop signs. Furthermore, only one intersection is allowed in this setup with stop signs. Press the Start button and the simulation screen appears:
At first glance, only one vehicle has the right of way to enter the intersection at any time. But it is not true: when the vehicle inside the intersection almost completes its traversal and is leaving the intersection, another vehicle can move into into the intersection. Under the stop signs, vehicles are first-come, first-serve---the first vehicle who stops at the intersection is allowed to enter intersection. If multiple vehicles stop at the intersection, the right of ways are granted in a counter-clockwise direction of the entering roads.

5. Simlulation Controls

In this section, we will explain other functions for controlling simulations in the simulator. At the bottom of the simulator window is the simulation control panel:
The control panel is used for controlling the simulation process and display various information related to the simulation. Apart from the control panel, the menu items in the menu bar also provides several useful function for conducting experiments and displaying useful information.

5.1 Buttons, Keyboard shortcuts, and Mouse Controls

On the left of the control panel, there are two buttons. The first one is the Start/Pause/Resume button. The second one is the Step button. In previous sections, we have already used the Start button to start a simulation. Once the Start button is pressed, it will turn into the Pause botton, which is used to pause the simulation. Once the simulation is paused, the Pause button becomes the Resume button, which is used to resume the simulation. When the simulation is paused, users can press the Step button beneath the Resume button to advance the simulation step by step, at an increment of 0.02 second. You can control the simulation by using the following keyboard shortcuts, which functions are similar to the buttons: You can use your mouse's scroll wheel to zoom-in and zoom-out of the map. Put the mouse cursor on the map and scroll the mouse's scroll wheel in the up direction to magnify the location at the cursor. Likewise, turn the scroll wheel to down direction will zoom out of the map. When you zoom into a map, the outer part of the map will be out of view area of the window. You can drag the map to view those areas by left clicking a position of a map, hold the left mouse button, and move your mouse cursor.

5.2 Control Tabs

There are six control tabs to control simulations and display useful information about the simulations. These tabs are: In the following sections, we will discuss the functions of each tabs in detail.

5.2.1 Simulation Tab

In the simulation tab, there are two sliders:

5.2.2 Statistics Tab

The statistics tab shows several important statistics of the current simulation process:

5.2.3 System Tab

The system tab shows the information about the system and the memory usage of the simulator.

5.2.4 Console Tab

The console screen is a text area for a simulation process to output various information pertinent to the simulation. This tab is mainly for debugging purpose. In this release, simulation processes do not send any message to the console.

5.2.5 Vehicle Tab

The vehicle tab and the vehicle information window show the information of the selected vehicle. To select vehicle, click a vehicle in the map. Once a vehicle is selected, the color of the vehicle will change to orange:
At the same time, the vehicle information window will appear:
The vehicle information shows the following information: Then select the vehicle tab:
In addition to the VIN, the current velocity and the current acceleration, the vehicle tab shows the following additional information.

5.2.6 Admin Tab

The admin tab allows users to replace the intersection manager of the selected intersection on the fly when the simulation process is running. First, you have to select an intersection by clicking the intersection. The color of the outline of selected intersection will change to orange after the selection:
Then click the admin tab and you can select one of the following three intersection managers:

5.4 Menu bar

More functions are accessible from the menu bar of the simulator. In this section, we will describe some of these functions. 
Copyright (c) 2011 Tsz-Chiu Au (chiu@cs.utexas.edu), Peter Stone (pstone@cs.utexas.edu)
University of Texas at Austin
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