Mixed-Traffic Platoon Control at Signalized Intersections
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing intersections with mixed traffic, comprising autonomous sensor-rich vehicles and legacy vehicles, poses challenges due to differing capabilities, leading to accidents and congestion, as existing solutions do not effectively coordinate navigation and fuel efficiency across both types of vehicles.
Innovation Solution
A system in autonomous sensor-rich vehicles that forms platoons with legacy vehicles, receives Signal Phase and Timing information, and calculates speed profiles and trajectories to minimize delay and fuel consumption, while controlling other vehicles in the platoon through vehicle-to-vehicle communication and infrastructure communication.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If autonomous sensor-rich vehicles navigate intersections independently, then each vehicle can make its own navigation decisions, but traffic coordination deteriorates leading to congestion and accidents
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges independent autonomous vehicles into coordinated platoons, combining individual navigation capabilities with collective traffic management. Vehicles form platoons and coordinate their movements through communication, allowing them to maintain autonomous operation while achieving improved traffic flow efficiency and reduced congestion at intersections.
2Use of energy by moving object
If autonomous vehicles optimize for individual fuel efficiency, then each vehicle minimizes its own energy consumption, but overall traffic coordination deteriorates causing delays
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where autonomous vehicles exchange information about their fuel consumption, speed, and trajectory with other vehicles in the platoon and with infrastructure. This allows the system to optimize speed profiles and trajectories collectively, reducing overall delay while maintaining fuel efficiency through coordinated rather than purely individual optimization.
3Reliability
If all vehicles were autonomous sensor-rich, then navigation safety would improve, but the transition period complexity increases due to mixed traffic
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces communication systems and coordination protocols as intermediaries between autonomous sensor-rich vehicles and legacy vehicles. These intermediaries enable autonomous vehicles to share their advanced capabilities with legacy vehicles through platoon formation, allowing safer navigation patterns to be established without requiring all vehicles to be autonomous, thus managing mixed traffic complexity while improving safety.
4Reliability
If autonomous vehicles maintain larger safety distances, then collision risk decreases, but traffic flow efficiency deteriorates due to increased spacing
Solution Approach 1:
By merging multiple vehicles into coordinated platoons, the system allows vehicles to maintain smaller inter-vehicle distances while achieving equivalent or superior safety through collective awareness and coordination. The platoon acts as a unified entity with enhanced perception capabilities, enabling reduced safety margins without compromising collision avoidance, thus improving traffic throughput.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for cooperatively managing mixed traffic at an intersection are disclosed herein. One embodiment determines, at an autonomous sensor-rich vehicle, that one or more other vehicles are following in the same lane, the one or more other vehicles including at least one legacy vehicle; communicates with the one or more other vehicles to form a platoon; receives Signal Phase and Timing (SpaT) information from a roadside unit associated with an intersection toward which the platoon is traveling; calculates at the autonomous sensor-rich vehicle, based at least in part on the SPaT information and location information for the platoon, a speed profile and a trajectory for the autonomous sensor-rich vehicle that minimize a delay of the platoon in traversing the intersection while accounting for fuel consumption; and executes the speed profile and the trajectory to control indirectly the one or more other vehicles while the platoon traverses the intersection.