Intersection Management Protocol for Mixed Autonomous and Human-Operated Vehicles

This article proposes a Hybrid Autonomous Intersection Management protocol (H-AIM), which is a variant of the formerly presented Autonomous Intersection Management protocol (AIM). Similar to AIM, H-AIM coordinates the right of way for connected and autonomous vehicles through an intersection in a way that is far more efficient compered to traditional traffic signals. Unlike AIM, H-AIM is shown to outperform traditional traffic signals also when traffic is mostly composed of human operated vehicles. H-AIM builds on top of existing traffic signal infrastructure, it assumes that human operated vehicles stop at red signals and cross the intersection on a green signal. By assuming the ability to detect incoming human operated vehicles, H-AIM is able to safely direct autonomous vehicles through the intersection even if they arrive on a lane that is assigned a red signal. Experimental results are provided showing that H-AIM can decrease traffic delay for autonomous vehicles even at 1% technology penetration rate. Furthermore, the presented results suggest that restricting human operated vehicles turning options in each lane e.g., they can only turn right on the rightmost lane as appose to also having the option to continue straight, is beneficial for autonomous vehicles. Apart from presenting H-AIM this article also provides general guidelines as to how to assign lanes with turning options for human operated and autonomous vehicles.