Managing road intersections in crowded and dynamic environments, such as urban areas, can be highly challenging. The poor management of traffic at these can lead to road accidents, wastage of fuel, and environmental pollution.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have recently developed GAMEOPT, a new algorithm that could help manage unsignalized road intersections with high traffic more efficiently. The research team with members, Nilesh Suriyarachchi, Rohan Chandra, John S. Baras and Dinesh Manocha introduced their method in a recent paper to be published in the proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2022). This method combines optimization techniques with ideas from game theory, a mathematical construct that represents situations in which different agents are competing with one another.
“Forty percent of all crashes, 50% of serious collisions, and 20% of fatalities occur at unsignalized intersections,” Chandra, a member of the research team, told TechXplore. “Our primary objective is to improve traffic flow and fuel efficiency in poorly regulated or unregulated traffic intersections. To achieve this objective, we propose an algorithm that combines ideas from optimization and game theory to understand how different traffic agents cooperate and negotiate with each other at traffic intersections.”
