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Traffic Control of the Future
petra13 writes "A high point of the Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems conference this past week was Kurt Dresner and Peter Stone's paper 'Multiagent Traffic Management: A Reservation-Based Intersection Control Mechanism.' They designed an automated system where cars reserve a time to pass through an intersection as they approach it and are then sped up or slowed down to ensure their arrival at exactly the right time. This allows traffic to enter the intersection from all directions simultaneously, eliminating the need for traffic lights and considerably reducing delays caused by stopping traffic. On their website, you can find Java applet simulations to illustrate the system. Especially impressive looking is the six lanes of heavy traffic in all directions simulation. I would love to see this in real life (from a safe distance of course)."
I have to wonder if these simulations or plans account for bicycles or pedestrians?
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That six-lane each way simulation is awesome, but they had better modify the thing before actually rolling it out so that the cars don't go so damn close to each other. Computer control or not, I don't want another guy's car 7" from my bumper at 70 km/h...
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
That simulation was pretty impressive when I looked at it. Until I realized something. None of the cars are turning left or right. Theories and math and simulations work great and are often impressive. But real world factors will almost always mess them up.
So one day when there is a way to get from everywhere on earth to every other place on earth without turning left or right give me a call. Until then, let's stop and let people turn left.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Now all we have to do is convince the general population that their cars are safe in the autonomous control of computers rather than their own two hands. Sure, *I* know that having automobiles controlled by a sophisticated traffic network would be safer and more efficient -- I read Slashdot, after all -- but I doubt very many people in this country would be so thrilled about the idea of giving up their grip on the steering wheel.
I know people have already commented on the cars not changing lanes or turning, and the possibility of breakdown, but this system would be easy to exploit maliciously. If an agent didn't slow down the car, or misreported its speed/location, that could make for a lot of... er... amusement?
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Here in Britain, we have a less sophisticated system for letting multiple streams of traffic enter an intersection with minimal delay; It's called a roundabout, and we use them everywhere.
its not offtopic realy,
:( ..use Google!
Posted by michael on Saturday July 24, @04:07PM
from the i-feel-lucky dept./I>
i-feel-lucky? damn even this geek site's crew has a girlfriend..
Hivemind harvest in progress..
There are lots of places where you have a need for traffic control with big or many vehicles, in tight spaces. Such resource allocation is a huge part of many problems. That's where they should market this first, I think.
Insurance companies will want real proof that such a system will be stable and as secure as today's intersections before even half-considering it.
:)
Such proof for this system will require that ALL cars in the area be equipped with such systems and an equally large number of intersections handled.
This roadblock to development was what happened to a demo for a system in which cars controlled by computers would follow magnets in a road and drive within 1m of other cars. That was a couple of years back in San Diego.
If cars are going to be automated someday, we'll need to find some compromise which does not require implementation for all vehicles on a road- i.e. a lane for truckers on long stretches of highway.
That's just my 2 cents. Something like this would be really cool should we ever get to this point....or we could just get flying cars and fly over
Stick the granularity on 3 and try: .04 .06
:P
N: 2 -
E: 4 - 1
S: 2 -
W: 4 - 0.1
you can see the system cue the cars on the east -> west road up and create little 'gaps' in the flow across all lanes that sync up with the north/south cars as they cross, nice to look at but it really needs turning and lane crossing, on the low granularity the cars get more clearence which is abit more realistic
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Imagine a theme park doing the 6 lane version as a futuristic thrill ride. You'd have to hose off the seats after every run...
The same thing that would happen without the system...the other people either 1) Stop, 2) Stop, and help move your vehicle if necessary or 3) Drive right into you because they weren't paying attention.
What happens if a pedestrian walks into the intersection? If a car's brakes fail or it doesn't accelerate as fast as it should?
This would require that every car on the road has both extremely precise acceleration and precise location reference (possible with GPS, but even that only has resolution of a few meters).
In short, this tech certainly won't be around anytime soon.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
"Approaching intersection, please close eyes."
cygnuhchur
if they are not going to consider turning lanes, there is a Much simpiler solution. A Bridge. If every vehicle is only going straight, an elevated bridge is the solution.
the other problem with this solution is average car length. An accepted Average car length is 19 ft. But the first semi truck that goes through this intersection gets t-boned.
This is barely a concept techonology. Every one thinks they are a Transportation Engineer because they drive cars, the problem is always much more complex.
Network management is not a solution to transportion problems.
It would be nice to know whether that light ahead of you is going to change or not so you can speed up / slow down to compensate. It would probably subdue a ton of Class A personality drivers and make the commute perhaps a bit more enjoyable.
In a bunch of cities in Canada, they have a bunch of "If this light is blinking, prepare to stop" lights. Tends to help the traffic flow and mood of the drivers quite a bit.
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So where's the Frog?
Banu
The problem with all these traffic management systems is that they are attempting to solve the wrong problem. What they should be doing is asking why there are so many people on the road at the same time all going in the same direction.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
What about mixing traffic lights with a reservation system? as you get near you signal the computer your intentions early (left/right/straight) and it starts giving you a speed to match, the speed would be tuned to try and prevent you needing to stop or slow down too much which makes everything quicker for everyone, if you did break or you didnt have the system installed (or it malfunctioned) you would just drive like normal and obviously stop if there was a car infront of you or a red light. Technically this already exists - its called 'figuring out how fast you should go' but people either dont bother or get it wrong and end up stopping - the advantage would be that the computer _knows_ exactly when the lights are going to change because its the one doing the changing, there would be no safety issues and the whole thing would be optional? It would be like automated air-traffic-control for cars with the backup feature that cars can stop if needed.
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Actually you do, and heres why. If he should slam on his breaks, you will almost instantly hit him. The force you hit him with will be minimal, as he will not have had any time to slow down. Basic physics says if you rear end someone who is doing 68mph, when you are doing 70, will produce a 2mph impact.
Now, you say, wouldn't it be better to have enough room to stop completely, and NOT hit them at all? An excellent idea, but you have to have quite a bit of space to go from 70 to 0 + plus the delta distance you travel in the two tenths of a second that is required for you to react.
Now that is a far mor ideal sutiation, but if you have driven on a freeway in any mahor city, you know that the volume of traffic during a busy period will preclude a 50 foot spacing between each car. With a 15 foot spacing, you only insure that when the person infront of you slams on the brakes, that you will hit them pretty hard.
Lesser of two evils, I'll take the 1 foot spacing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The first thing I thought when I was watching the simulation was it would be nerve-wracking sitting in a car when it looks like it's just gonna plow into another car. Instead of doing it in an intersection make a bumpercar ride out of it and everynow and again put in some fuzzy numbers and send bumper cars filled with people careening into each other. People would call it fun and they'd pay you to torture them! Muahahahahahahahahaha...
No one turns. In addition to safety concerns, dogs, breakdowns, drunk drivers, etc, you hit on something another AC pointed out above (he's at 0, someone mod him up?) that "highways don't have intersections, eh". Really I think this is more applicable to a situation with all-computer control, not really partial or total human control.
Hypothetically, lets say that turning just boils down to scheduling a longer interval in the area where you turn at. So more cars slow down for someone to turn than just cars zipping through. I think the demo was maybe going for "wow" effect.. i think we probably mostly think this would result in accidents. Presuming it is intended for extensive application, I think we are talking about an "autodrive" system with people as passengers not pilots.
dystopian police state arrests passengers in their own cars, free reg required, news at 11, blah blah blah
I guess it would cost a lot to install this on a large scale and in every car, so NoYes19, I guess I would agree with you that better road design may be more agreeable short term.
Maybe long term, if shipping, mail and passenger transport becomes highly integrated, our roads will become more like a well run train system, and (at least in heavy traffic or high speed long haul situations) we drivers will sit back and sleep until Brooklyn. :)
One other comment, did you watch the simulation for a minute... the cars together tend to take up diagonal line formations. I'm thinking of a 4way with a stop sign or a roundabout as similar to ethernet as this simulation is to ATM (where time is scheduled ahead of transmission) and it got me thinking, what if the cars grouped together in steady patterns instead of (what appears to me to be) an emergent pattern of diagnonal lines (or is that on purpose?) mixed with apparently random scattering of cars through each other? BTW, props to the researchers.
preview? ..bah
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Have you ever tried to program a traffic simulation? There are few simulations more trivial, so don't be impressed.
Second, traffic simulations based on human behavior are always post hoc analysis. Twiddle the parameters until it looks right, then make up the behavior that fits the parameters. If you've ever had a chance to play with one, they are a lot of fun. Often the whole simulation falls apart with less than a 5 percent change in some parameters.
Actually, this is true of almost all behavioral modelling. If you've ever done any reading in modelling of software systems, you know how hard that can be (try proving the safety of critical sections in a multithreaded system). Behavioral modelling has all of the great concurrency of software modelling with less determinism (or at least it should...). What makes anyone trust behavioral modelling is beyond me.
As a side note, many things in the real world are based on this kind of crappy science all the time. Check out the San Diego freeway system. The I5 805 merge was just recently redone to improve traffic flow. It failed miserably. Staffing levels on military vessels are done by models. The ships are always understaffed initially until trial and error fixes them.
Unfortunately, people think that computer simulations can solve all problems, even when there is no theoretical reason to believe that the model will even approximate reality.
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
as many have pointed out:
no turning
no dogs
no breakdowns
no bicycles
and as i'm pointing out:
no lane changes
no variable sized cars/busses
no emergency vehicles!
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turning can be solved, the outer most lanes are for turning, and would theirfor not place a lease on the forward motion but would place a lease on the crossing lane so any oncoming traffic the crosses in the turning lane would be told accordingly.
lane changes would have to be allowed only far between intersections, and disallowed in the intersections.
no generic vehicle size could be accounted for, but every vehicle must state it's size when placing lease, so busses could get more intersection time. ALSO, busses should have a higher priority and that could be stated with conditions to acceptance while placing lease.
accidents can be handled via a motion detection system at the intersection seeing non-leased action and routing traffic to other lanes around the incident. if their are 6 lanes, and an accident or breakdown occurs blocking 2 lanes, then the other 4 lanes must be routed for traffic instantly.
Emergency vehicles(EV) must take top priority and must also place a lease as they arrive. other traffic would route around the EV.
pedestrians should not be allowed and high walls and fences should protect such roadways. also, the incedent detection system should be able to see non-lease activity and if it is moving. Then adjust traffic speeds accordingly and signal for human intervention.
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though these intersections would be autonomous, they would require human monitoring of signaled events, and human can make deccisions and lower traffic speed to adapt.
Starting 2020 driving on a highway or in most city-centers without being on autonomous control would be a crime. Starting 2010 driving a vehicle not sending valid transponder signals would be a crime.
Of course the transponder signal will drive privacy advocates nuts, but I don't think you can get to a robust autonomous driving system without it. I suspect transponders are coming anyway for other reasons, so best to make lemonade out of lemons. Yes you will be taxed for in city driving -- sorry, it's coming anyway. Yes cops will know where your car was in any 48-hour period -- get over it. Yes you will no longer be able to speed - who cares as long as I can blog /. while I ride, and my average arrival time is lower due to everyone optimizing the available traffic ways.
As to unexpected hazards like pedestrians, cars will have built in radar (already practical) that reacts much quicker than even the most alert driver. Drivers will have to be insulated legally from any liability for hitting a pedestrian when said pedestrian jaywalks in an autonomous driving zone, as will the autonomous driving system manufactures.
Will children and pets be hit by robot cars? Yes, but congress will have to mandate legal protections as long as aggregate fatalities fall. Gross negligence in equipment manufacture could still be prosecuted, but any system certified by government for use should be immune from legal persecution as long as the accident falls outside of the parameters the government mandates it be able to handle. The legal challenges are the true roadblock, even if aggregate safety is improved.
While we're at it, lets lower the sound level of emergency vehicles, but have a signal override your loud radio to inform you that there is an emergency vehicle approaching. Same for trains. This could lead to some additional pedestrian accidents, but not if pedestrians are trained to use existing traffic systems better. Children could (should?) be equipped with transponders to alert the system to increase safety margins (i.e. slowdown). Of course transponders on children is another hot button topic, but I'm not referring to some 24/7 implant, but a device they carry when in downtown areas, same for the handicapped and the elderly, even your average citizen if they wish to enhance their own safety.
Transponder abuse must be a severely prosecuted crime for obvious reasons, both for sending false signals or for stalking individuals by tracking their signals.
You can fight these changes, which I believe will come, or you can live in a less technologically advanced nation. Other countries come to mind: "autonomous driving mandated ... in Japan" (ongoing /. joke). We will not have robot servants, we will not have autonomous highways, we will not have other unthought of applications of technology if we are not willing to allow our physical presence to be tracked in real space (and this means everybody). How that information is used and stored is where we must concentrate or efforts in the privacy fight.
Granted sufficiently intelligent systems would not need transponders and
Letter To Iran
In the USA at least, commercial airline travel is much much safer than riding in a conventional automobile.
And yet people don't care. They think air travel is dangerous but thinking nothing of their cars that kill 30,000 per year and injure millions per year. In terms of human life, there's a WTC catastrophe *every month* on the highways.
So it's not about safety. It doesn't matter whether an automatic system is safer than a human-controlled system or not. People want contro and don't actually care about safety.
I've got an idea - create a mass transit system where cars link to each other and contribute to the overall propulsion of the train. This way we can all go in straight lines together and unlink when we need to go home. Kind of like a bicycling team, but the one who leads is the one who expects to travel furthest. People drive up to get in queue, and link at a speed exactly the same as which the train is travelling. When they need to get off, they begin to drive at a calculated speed and then come off the train. That way we dont need a bunch of lanes. Will someone make some java applets now?
Working in feet and seconds
s1(0)-s2(0)=7/12
a=-32.2 (ie a 1 g stop)
First car
s1(t)=v0*t-16.1*t^2
s2(t)=-7/12+v0*t
They collide when s1 =s2
so v0*t-16.1*t^2=-7/12+v0*t
so t is sqrt(7/(12*16)) or roughly 0.2 s
so the car in front will have slowed by 6 fps, or 4 mph.
So the OP was wrong, with a 1g stop, but not by much, and if she'd assumed a more realistic acceleration, she'd be right, or wrong by less.