Explicit Negotiation Method for Cooperative Automated Vehicles

Abstract

The cooperation of road traffic participants is desirable in order to increase overall efficiency and safety. Using the ITS-G5 standard, automated vehicles can exchange status information and negotiate conditions of cooperative maneuvers. This paper deals with a method for explicit negotiation of conflicting maneuvers between vehicles. For that, a cooperation method that contains an application level vehicle-to-vehicle communication procedure is established to enable traffic participants to reserve areas on the street precisely defined in position and time. The method is flexible and thus capable of being applied to various traffic situations. For the evaluation of the method, several traffic situations with multiple automated vehicles are simulated with and without the use of the cooperation method. The comparison between the cooperative and the non-cooperative scenarios shows a significant decrease of the travel time for a constant distance using the cooperation method.