Dynamic Intersections and Self-Driving Vehicles

Connected and automated vehicles are expected to be at the core of future intelligent transportation systems. One of the main practical challenges for self-driving vehicles on public roads is safe cooperation and collaboration among multiple vehicles when conflicts arise on shared road segments. Intersections controlled by traffic lights and stop signs are common examples of such potential conflicts, and cooperative protocols for such intersections have been studied. On the other hand, there are many different types of shared road segments. In this paper, we study Dynamic Intersections that might appear almost anytime and anywhere on public roads and that might lead to automobile accidents. We consider how a self-driving vehicle can safely navigate these dynamic intersections by using sensor-based perception and inter-vehicle communications. We present a cooperative protocol for dynamic intersections which can be used by self-driving vehicles for safely coordinating with other vehicles. Under our protocol, self-driving vehicles can also create a vehicular communication-based traffic manager named Cyber Traffic Light when the area is congested. A cyber traffic light functions as a self-optimizing traffic light by estimating the traffic volumes and by wirelessly coordinating among multiple self-driving vehicles. Our simulation results show that our protocol has higher traffic throughput, compared to simple traffic protocols while ensuring safety.