A Practical Approach toward Implementing Automated Intersection Management

The introduction of automatic intersection management (AIM) promises higher traffic flows and air quality by increasing the effective capacity of the intersection. Unfortunately, automatic control is only possible in a fully autonomous environment without legacy vehicles and vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians. In this paper we introduce hybrid intersection management: a concept which makes it possible to gain the benefits from autonomous vehicles in the situation with mixed traffic. A new message protocol, the individual Space & Time message (iSPaT), is introduced to effectively send instructions to autonomous vehicles. The iSPaT message is also used to guide autonomous vehicles safely over the intersection in a “woven” manner. The development of hybrid intersection management can be started today, and shifts towards automatic control when the amount of autonomous vehicles increases.