Consensus-based local information coordination for the networked control of the autonomous intersection management

Autonomous intersection management (AIM) will be a future method for improving traffic efficiency in the urban area. Instead of using the traffic signal control like nowadays, it uses wireless communication with autonomous vehicles to support the management of road traffic more safely and efficiently. A single AIM shows an exceptional performance in managing traffics at an intersection. However, it could not be represented a traffic in the real world, which is composed of multiple intersections. We show that coordination of traffic information among vehicles and infrastructures is an essential part of macroscopic traffic management. Coordination of traffic information among the network of AIMs is the key to improve the overall traffic flow throughout the network not only has an optimal flow in some intersections and very heavy traffic in others. In this paper, we introduce the distributed control to a graph-based intersection network to control traffic in a macroscopic level. Vehicle to infrastructure and infrastructure to infrastructure communication are used to exchange the traffic information between a single autonomous vehicle to the network of autonomous intersections. We implement a discrete time consensus algorithm to coordinate the traffic density of an intersection with its neighborhoods and determine the control policy to maximize a traffic throughput of each intersection as well as stabilizing the overall traffic in the network. We use the Greenshields traffic model to define the boundary condition of various traffic flows to the corresponded traffic density and velocity. Our proposed method represents the ability to maintain traffic flow rate of each intersection without having a back up traffic. As well, every intersection operates under the uncongested flow condition. The simulation results of the graph-based networked control of a multiple autonomous intersection showed that the overall traffic flow in the network achieves up to $$20\%$$ higher than using traffic signal system.