Computer simulations are re-creation of a real-world scenario. Simulations
are important for many reasons including (but not limited to) safety and cost.
Also simulations may assist in decision making by allowing alternatives to be
tested before a course of action is chosen. For this assignment you are to
create a simple simulation of the traffic on a one-way three-lane road. Cars
enter the from the west and leave in the east. Areas outside of the road cannot
be traversed by cars. Furthermore parts of the road may narrow (and widen).
Potholes, which are also impassible, may randomly appear in the simulation.
At the start of the simulation the user can specify the duration of the
simulation and the arrival rate of cars. Then the simulation will run on a
turn by turn basis and display it's current before pausing and prompting the
user to continue. When the simulation ends statistics will be displayed:
- Displays an introduction at the beginning of the simulation just after
it starts. The introduction should explain how the program works.
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- Displays a conclusion when the simulation ends. If your program
generates statistics about the simulation then this information should be
shown during the sign off.
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- The simulation is initialized with the starting positions provided in
the resource file "traffic.py"
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- Show the current state of the simulation. The output should be
reasonably neat and presentable so the user can understand what is
currently happening with the simulation. The columns and rows should be
labeled in the fashion shown the screenshot.
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- The simulation runs for a fixed number of turns. The basic version of
the program will run the simulation for 20 turns. A slightly superior
version will prompt the user for this information when the simulation is
first started. At the end of each turn the program will show the current
state of the simulation, and the program will pause until the user hits
enter, before proceeding to the next turn.
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- Cars move in a west to east fashion (that means that cars farthest
east move first)
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- Basic version: cars move 1 square per turn.
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- Cars only move onto empty squares (avoids impassible areas and
potholes - if that feature is implemented).
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- When the square in front of a car is occupied it will try to move
forward one square in a diagonal fashion (up/north is attempted before
down/south).
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- Cars that reach the eastern most side are removed from the simulation.
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- Cars
randomly appear in the three west-most (entry) squares:
cars only appear in a particular square if that square is
empty.
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- Basic
version: 50% chance that a car will appear in a particular entry square.
The probability is not the chance that a car will appear in one of the
three entry squares. Instead there is a 50% chance for each square
that a car will appear there.
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- Advanced
version: at the start of the program the user is prompted to enter a
probability. The probability should be entered in a percentage form e.g.,
50.5 instead of 0.505. While prompting for the percent the program should
inform that the user that he or she can use the default probability of 50%
by entering a value outside of the range of 0 – 100%.
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- Cars can
accelerate or stop when moving straight forward (east). Each car will move
0 – 3 squares when moving in a purely west to east direction. All squares
between the source and destination must be empty. (If there is at least
one obstacle between it’s current location and the destination then it
won’t move). If a car is blocked from moving multiple squares then the
program should first try to move single square forward and then if it's
still blocked it will try moving diagonally. Cars that change lanes can
only move one square.
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At the end of each turn if the user types ‘d’
‘or D’ and hits enter (instead of just
enter) it will toggle debugging mode. When in debugging mode the program
should display messages that reflect the current state of the program in
order to help you debug it (e.g., a message appears when a function is
called, a message displays the contents of variables). Generally the exact
content of these messages is up to your discretion. But you should
incorporate them into your program as you are creating it in order to test
and debug it rather than just adding this feature at the very end. The
minimum requirements for debugging mode is: the program should indicate
that debugging mode is turned on when the city is displayed (no message
appears if it’s off), feedback will be immediately shown as debugging mode
is toggled. [Example] Other debugging
messages must appear but their content is up to you.
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- There's
a 25% chance that a pothole randomly appears on one of the empty squares.
This probability is checked once a turn to see if one pothole appears
in one of the empty squares. (It isn’t checked individually for each
empty square). Squares with potholes are marked with an ‘X’.
Once a pothole appears in the simulation it remains there until the end.
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- Simulation tracks and displays during the signoff information about
the three statistics: duration, exits from the simulation, new entries
into the simulation.
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Initialize world (the starting location of cars, empty spaces and
inaccessible areas must be the same as my program)
To help you see how the features work there are a few text files that show
the output of my solution. They can be found in UNIX under:
/home/231/assignments/assignment4.
Also I found a few online traffic simulations that you can run through your
web browser:
And to show that simulations aren't just fun and games and can be a part of
serious research:
