A Vehicle-Intersection Coordination Scheme for Smooth Flows of Traffic Without Using Traffic Lights

TLDR

The paper proposes a traffic‑light‑free coordination scheme for automated vehicles at intersections. The scheme uses a two‑way communication network and a model‑predictive‑control framework to compute optimal vehicle trajectories that avoid cross‑collision risks while respecting constraints and preferences. Simulation results show that the scheme efficiently utilizes the intersection area, permits turning movements without auxiliary lanes, and significantly outperforms traditional signalized intersections under various traffic conditions.

Abstract

This paper presents a coordination scheme of automated vehicles at an intersection without using any traffic lights. Using a two-way communication network, vehicles approaching the intersection from all sections are globally coordinated, by considering their states all together in a model predictive control framework, in order to achieve smooth traffic flows at the intersection. The optimal trajectories of the vehicles are computed based on avoidance of their cross-collision risks around the intersection under relevant constraints and preferences. The scheme efficiently utilizes the intersection area by preventing each pair of conflicting vehicles from approaching their cross-collision point at the same time, instead of reserving the whole intersection area for the conflicting vehicles one after another. The scheme also enables left- or right-turning movements of vehicles under constrained velocity without using any auxiliary lanes. The proposed vehicle-intersection coordination scheme is evaluated through numerical simulation in a typical test intersection consisting of both multilanes and single-lane approaches with turning movements of vehicles. Observations under different traffic flow conditions reveal that the proposed scheme significantly improves intersection performance compared with the traditional signalized intersection scheme.