"North Carolina State University engineers suggest the idea of adding white traffic lights to allow self-driving cars to communicate with each other while cruising on busy roads. The proposal, led by Professor Ali Hajbabaie, is a traffic system that allows these autonomous vehicles to organize their movement through the intersection without stopping too often. In the normal system, traffic lights have three colors: red means stop, green means go, and yellow means prepare to stop. In the new system, there is an additional white light."
"This light activates when there are enough autonomous cars near the intersection. When the white light turns on, it signals that self-driving cars are taking control of the traffic flow. Human drivers just have to follow the car in front. If that car moves, they move. If it stops, they stop. When there are not enough autonomous vehicles, the traffic light switches back to the normal red-yellow-green pattern, meaning this system depends on the number of automated cars present at a given time."
A traffic system adds a white light that activates when enough autonomous cars are near an intersection. The white phase signals that self-driving cars coordinate traffic while human drivers follow the vehicle ahead. The method is called the mobile control paradigm, in which each autonomous vehicle uses onboard computing to calculate speed, distance, and position and forms a distributed network of moving controllers. A prior centralized approach assigned decision-making to one intersection computer; the distributed version uses each vehicle's computing power. Microscopic traffic simulations show reduced stops, lower fuel use, and shorter waiting times depending on automated vehicle penetration.
Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine
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