Emergency Vehicle Maneuvers and Control Laws for Automated Highway Systems

Abstract

Abstract In this paper the operation and transit of emergency vehicles on an Automated Highway System (AHS) designed under the control architecture proposed in the California PATH program is described. The term emergency vehicles is used in a general sense to describe vehicles, such as police cars, ambulances and tow trucks, that may service faults inside or outside the AHS. The transit of emergency vehicles requires intensive participation of the Coordination layer, which directs the interactions of neighboring vehicles, and the Link layer, which regulates traffic flow along stretches of highway. In this paper, we describe various strategies for these two hierarchical layers that are needed to assign high priority transit to emergency vehicles on the AHS. These Coordination and Link layer maneuvers circulate vehicles around the emergency vehicle in both free flowing and stopped traffic.