Autonomous vehicle interactions in the urban street environment: A research agenda

© ICE Publishing 2018. All rights reserved. The Venturer project is trialling an autonomous vehicle (AV) in the context of use on urban roads. This paper summarises a literature review undertaken to assist in developing a research agenda for the trialling. The first contribution of the paper is a framework of four use scenarios for AVs as follows: (1) fully segregated AV network, (2) motorway or expressway network, (3) typical urban network, (4) shared space. The paper then focuses on a review of the social interactions in the street environment and discusses issues concerning human behaviour in relation to autonomy. The second contribution of the paper is a set of research questions for AV trialling in relation to other road users, including, pedestrians and cyclists, which have emerged from the literature review.

United Kingdom

This chapter presents the general practice on road traffic signal control in the United Kingdom. Section 5.1 provides a brief history of the use of traffic signals control in the United Kingdom. Section 5.2 discusses some state-of-the-art of the practice. Section 5.3 presents the signal timing procedure. Section 5.4 presents the principles of signal phasing with notes on various special treatments including turning movements, bicycles, pedestrians, and transit priority. Section 5.5 presents the signal timing calculation methods with the use of Webster’s formula. Section 5.6 concludes with a simple working example on how one can derive a signal timing plan for an isolated junction with the use of Webster’s formula