Coordination of Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles Toward safer and more efficient road transportation

While intelligent transportation systems come in many shapes and sizes, arguably the most transformational realization will be the autonomous vehicle. As such vehicles become commercially available in the coming years, first on dedicated roads and under specific conditions, and later on all public roads at all times, a phase transition will occur. Once a sufficient number of autonomous vehicles is deployed, the opportunity for explicit coordination appears. This article treats this challenging network control problem, which lies at the intersection of control theory, signal processing, and wireless communication. We provide an overview of the state of the art, while at the same time highlighting key research directions for the coming decades

Priority-based coordination of robots

20 pagesThis paper addresses the problem of coordinating multiple robots travelling through an intersection along fixed paths with positive velocities and kinodynamic constraints. The approach relies on a novel tool: a priority graph that encodes the relative order of the robots at the intersection. The overall planning approach can be decomposed into two key components as follows. The entry of robots into the intersection is managed by an intersection controller that assigns priorities. Within the intersection area, robots are controlled by a control law that preserves assigned priorities, avoids collisions, and is robust to unexpected decelerations of some robots occurring randomly