Distributed Intersection Management Algorithms for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Since a couple of decades, the technological driving aids have gone growing at a dizzying pace with the intention of making these systems more efficient and safe. These driving aids have been covering failures that the researchers name "erratic driving" or "unsafe driving behaviors" and are arbitrary decisions taken by a human driver which endanger all road users.These bad decisions in addition to the increasing number of driving commutes in a city nowadays (post pandemic), show the need to continue doing technological proposals focused on where there are more complex interactions between vehicles when density increases; for instance, an intersection in rush hour.The developments in driving aids have been orientated in two topics: the first driving automation (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems -ADAS and Automated Vehicles -AV) and the second road traffic management (centralized or distributed algorithms to traffic control). Although there are currently several automotive companies and research centers working in the two topics, and in special in some cases removing the equation the human behavior, there are still lacks in the configurations for an vehicle autonomous be able to make optimal decisions front to all possible conditions available in a road traffic. Now, and take into account the two topics aforementioned about driving aids developments, researchers broadly envisage that in order to reach autonomous driving levels higher (first topic) in the next decade, is necessary to study how to do autonomous vehicle interactions (second topic) more efficient. Therefore, road intersections are an instance where it is possible to analyse cases of highly complexity interactions between vehicles, because it is a part of road infrastructure where the vehicles sharing lanes, paths, crossings or lane changes at will and it could generate collisions on conflict points and time delay in the commutes if there is not an appropriate cooperation.Hence, this thesis proposes a series of distributed algorithms to traffic control on intersections, based on interchange of communications between autonomous vehicles (local interactions) near to the intersections that show emergent behaviors to crossing cooperative, safe way and efficiency with high densities the traffic system on intersections. This research is developed us-Chapter 1 Autonomous Driving and Its Context"Autonomous vehicles will not only change the way we move but also the way we live." -Unknown Author.