Intersections management for autonomous vehicles: a heuristic approach

Abstract

Roads intersections are one of the main causes of traffic jams since vehicles need to stop and wait for their time to go. Scenarios that only consider autonomous vehicles can minimize this problem using intelligent systems that manage the time when each vehicle will pass across the intersection. This paper proposes a mathematical model and a heuristic that optimize this management. The efficiency of this approach is demonstrated using traffic simulations, with scenarios of different complexities, and metrics representing the arrival time, \(\hbox {CO}_{{2}}\) emission and fuel consumption. The results show that the present approach is scalable, maintaining its performance even in complex real scenarios. Moreover, its execution time is maintained in milliseconds, what suggests this approach as a candidate for dealing with real-time and dynamic scenarios.