Efficient Intersection Control for Minimally Guided Vehicles: A Self-Organised and Decentralized Approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a decentralized, self-organized traffic control scheme for intersections that requires only a majority of vehicles to have simple driver assistance systems, improving safety and efficiency without traffic lights.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel decentralized algorithm for intersection control that accounts for vehicle interactions and driver comfort, compatible with conventional and autonomous vehicles.

Findings

Safe, robust, and efficient traffic flow achieved

Compatible with conventional and autonomous vehicles

Scalable for large intersections

Abstract

An important question for the practical applicability of the highly efficient traffic intersection control is about the minimal level of intelligence the vehicles need to have so as to move beyond the traffic light control. We propose an efficient intersection traffic control scheme without the traffic lights, that only requires a majority of vehicles on the road to be equipped with a simple driver assistance system. The algorithm of our scheme is completely decentralized, and takes into full account the non-linear interaction between the vehicles at high density. For vehicles approaching the intersection in different directions, our algorithm imposes simple interactions between vehicles around the intersection, by defining specific conditions on the real-time basis, for which the involved vehicles are required to briefly adjust their dynamics. This leads to a self-organised traffic flow that is safe, robust, and efficient. We also take into account of the driver comfort level and study its effect on the control efficiency. The scheme has low technological barrier, minimal impact on the conventional driving behaviour, and can coexist with the traffic light control. It also has the advantages of being easily scalable, and fully compatible with both the conventional road systems as well as the futuristic scenario in which driverless vehicles dominate the road. The mathematical formulation of our scheme permits large scale realistic numerical simulations of busy intersections, allowing a more complete evaluation of the control performance, instead of just the collision avoidance at the intersection.