How the 'traffic light of the future' would save drivers time
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Surely this will complicate the game of red light, green light.
Researchers at North Carolina State are proposing a major change to traffic patterns across the country as they say a new, four-colored light at intersections would ease congestion and lower drivers’ fuel consumption — thus inadvertently saving car owners money.
The fourth artificially intelligent “white light,” as it’s called, would be used for self-driving “autonomous vehicles” by tapping into their “computing power,” according to North Carolina State professor and lead researcher Ali Hajbabaie.
Essentially, the AV cars can remotely communicate with one another in addition to the computer, which is controlling said smart traffic signals.
“The white phase concept also incorporates a new traffic signal, so that human drivers know what they are supposed to do,” Hajbabaie said. “Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them.”
The white light would activate when “enough AVs are approaching the intersection,” according to the project’s press release. From there, the computer programming would create the most efficient sequence for the AV cars to travel — or stop — with the human drivers tailing behind.
In situations where people outnumber AI drivers, the light would revert to a conventional red, yellow, and green, according to the research.
“Granting some of the traffic flow control to the AVs is a relatively new idea, called the mobile control paradigm,” said Hajbabaie, adding that the fourth light can be any desired color. “It can be used to coordinate traffic in any scenario involving AVs.”
The researcher’s latest plans differ from a 2020 model of a four-light intersection. Previously it was designed with a centralized computer approach where the computer built into the light was responsible for communicating with all vehicles rather than having them talk with one another.
“We’ve improved on that concept, and this paper outlines a white phase concept that relies on distributed computing — effectively using the computing resources of all the AVs to dictate traffic flow,” Hajbabaie said. “This is both more efficient, and less likely to fall prey to communication failures. For example, if there’s an interruption or time lag in communication with the traffic light, the distributed computing approach would still be able to handle traffic flow smoothly.”
Hajbabaie and his team tested out the “white light” concept on complex micro-traffic computerized simulators, which were calibrated to anticipate the variables that come with life on the road and how AVs will affect such habits.
“AVs improve traffic flow, regardless of the presence of the white phase,” Hajbabaie said. “Second, if there are AVs present, the white phase further improves traffic flow. This also reduces fuel consumption, because there is less stop-and-go traffic. Third, the higher the percentage of traffic at a white phase intersection that is made up of AVs, the faster the traffic moves through the intersection and the better the fuel consumption numbers.”
It was also found that the higher volume of AVs on the road led to the most reductions in traffic.
“That said, even if only 10% of the vehicles at a white phase intersection are autonomous, you still see fewer delays,” Hajbabaie said. “When 10% of vehicles are autonomous, you see delays reduced by 3%. When 30% of vehicles are autonomous, delays are reduced by 10.7%.”
While the research team is well aware that the four-light traffic intersection is years away from implementation, they are already eyeing areas where the concept could see a test drive.
“Ports see high volumes of commercial vehicle traffic, for which traffic flow is particularly important,” Hajbabaie said. “Commercial vehicles seem to have higher rates of autonomous vehicle adoption, so there could be an opportunity to implement a pilot project in that setting that could benefit port traffic and commercial transportation.”
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