Development of self-driving technology as if it had slowed down due to its complexity navigating human-controlled traffic. A new study from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers addresses this issue in mind by proposing a fourth light to our familiar three-color traffic lights, specifically for autonomous vehicles.
The three-color electronic traffic light has It has existed since 1914, and the color scheme is used worldwide. So get ready for all the old people to totally lose it The latest idea from the IEEE: A “white light” section on traffic lights that both helps guide self-driving cars and lets human drivers know where those cars are going.
Traffic lights would go into a “white phase” when coordinating AVs in traffic. The lack of color for traffic lights would also indicate to human drivers that autonomous vehicles are in control. The human driver then just followed the AV ahead, Next government reports:
“The concept we propose for transportation hubs, which we call ‘white phase,’ incorporates the computing power of autonomous vehicles (AVs),” says Ali Hajbabaie, associate professor of civil, civil and environmental engineering. North Carolina State University and corresponding author of the study IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
“The white phase concept also includes a new traffic signal so that human drivers know what to do. A red light still means stop. A green light still means go. And white lights tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them.”
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A white light indicates that the AVs are coordinating their movements facilitates traffic through the intersection more efficiently. All non-automated vehicles – driven by a person – should simply follow the vehicle in front of them: if the car in front of them stops, they stop; if the car in front of them crosses the intersection, they cross the intersection.
If too many vehicles approaching the intersection are controlled by drivers rather than AVs, the traffic light reverts to the traditional green-yellow-red signal.
“Handing over some of the traffic control to AVs is a relatively new idea called the mobile control paradigm,” says Hajbabaie. “It can be used to coordinate traffic in any scenario involving AVs. But we think it’s important to incorporate the white light concept at intersections because it tells human drivers what’s going on so they know what to do when they approach the intersection.
When IEEE researchers ran this idea through various simulations, they found that it improved traffic flow, regardless of how long the white phases lasted, and cost less in terms of fuel and emissions. The more AVs the researchers introduced into the simulation using the white phase, the faster the traffic flowed and the less fuel they consumed.
Self-driving cars have been a dream for decades, and it’s clear that we’ll need these cars to connect to the infrastructure to create a truly autonomous fleet. But everyone is waiting for when all cars will be AV. The white light is a small, ingenious way for AVs to exist during the adoption period, when more people than computers will be behind the wheel.
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While the paper clarified that the color of the new traffic light is not there is being white, I like to imagine that someone from team a Velvet Underground fan and pushed hard to make it the new color.
