Control of Vehicular Traffic at an Intersection Using a Cyber-Physical Multi-Agent Framework

A novel cyber-physical multi-agent framework is proposed to control traffic at an intersection. The vehicles, or physical agents, may pass the intersection smoothly utilizing the timings of traffic lights provided in advance. In the cyberspace, the durations of upcoming traffic lights are computed by a group of cyber agents using a stochastic gradient-based method known as broadcast control of multi-agent systems. For this computation of the traffic light durations, a function that represents the cost for blocking a vehicle by the red light is included in the objective function, which is minimized by the cyber agents to collectively provide the least-restrictive right-of-way in a receding horizon control approach to all vehicles at the intersection. The proposed scheme is evaluated through microscopic traffic simulation at various penetration rates of the automated vehicles, and performances are compared with existing schemes.