Cars without drivers - intersections without traffic lights

Peter Stone is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a specialist in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems engaged in traffic modeling, taking into account the widespread use of computer-driven vehicles. Stone believes that robots can make the transport system much more efficient. “Every intersection,” says Stone, “should be controlled by an autonomous intelligent agent that regulates the movement of each car individually, and not a traffic light that prohibits or allows the movement of the entire stream.”

On the visualization of the model of the future intersection, white color indicates robotic cars, and yellow - cars with live drivers and cars that have already passed the intersection and do not need the services of a dispatcher. It is seen that the robots pass the intersection without stopping at all, only slowing down a little or accelerating to coordinate their maneuver with the others. People have to wait, but the waiting time is an order of magnitude less than at a regular traffic light.



Of course, to imagine yourself in a car driving through such an intersection is still a bit creepy. In order to drive through the maelstrom of dozens of cars, enveloping each other almost without slowing down, one must get used to it from childhood, and such intersections are still a fairly distant future. On the other hand, cars under computer control, communicating with their own kind and with automatic dispatchers, are potentially capable of avoiding any accidents, rebuilding and turning, coordinating the maneuver in advance, never cutting anyone and instantly reacting to any unforeseen obstacle with the whole flow at once. When such technologies are properly debugged and familiar, most likely, driving a car manually on public roads will be generally prohibited, as it is now forbidden to drive without seat belts, and traffic lights will remain only where pedestrians and cyclists can completely block the traffic. In all other places it will be possible to cross the road at all without paying attention to the machines that will obediently pass a person, regardless of the direction and speed with which he is moving.
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On the website of the Autonomous Intersection Management project, you can see the results of modeling intersections with different numbers of lanes and varying degrees of workload, or download a simulator and play around with the parameters yourself.