Multiagent Traffic Management: A Reservation-Based Intersection Control Mechanism

TLDR

Traffic congestion causes significant productivity loss and reduced living standards in cities, and recent AI advances suggest autonomous vehicle navigation will soon be feasible. The authors propose a reservation‑based intersection control system for autonomous vehicles to alleviate traffic congestion. They develop a custom simulator to measure intersection delays and define a metric to evaluate control quality. Simulation results show the system outperforms traffic lights by two to three hundred times, handles heavier traffic smoothly, and closely approximates an overpass.

Abstract

Traffic congestion is one of the leading causes of lost productivity and decreased standard of living in urban settings. Recent advances in artificial intelligence suggest vehicle navigation by autonomous agents will be possible in the near future. In this paper, we propose a reservation-based system for alleviating traffic congestion, specifically at intersections, and under the assumption that the cars are controlled by agents. First, we describe a custom simulator that we have created to measure the different delays associated with conducting traffic through an intersection. Second, we specify a precise metric for evaluating the quality of traffic control at an intersection. Using this simulator and this metric, we show that our reservation-based system can perform two to three hundred times better than traffic lights. As a result, it can smoothly handle much heavier traffic conditions. We show that our system very closely approximates an overpass, which is the optimal solution for the problem with which we are dealing.