Design, Analysis and Optimization of Intersections of the Future

Intersection management algorithms need to be designed such that the efficiency and performance of intersections is maximized within the applicable safety conditions. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) promise a revolution in how intersections will be designed and managed in the (near) future. First, wireless communication between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I) or between vehicles
(V2V) will lead to a radically new and highly improved operation of intersections, where e.g. the infrastructure can dynamically assign some degree of priority to certain vehicle types. Secondly, by adding autonomous cars to the picture, the lack of a human factor makes that safety margins can be reduced such that efficiency can be further augmented considerably. In this project, we plan to design, model, analyze and optimize scheduling policies for managing such intersections of the future. We model individual intersections as multi-queue queueing systems and calculate performance measures using queueing theory. We also investigate how novel intersection management can be integrated in theory for complete road networks. The ultimate goal is to maximize efficiency of intersections of the future, locally as well as globally.