Prioritized Route Patterns for Autonomous Vehicles Using an IoT Cloud in Urban Scenarios

Abstract

At present, one of the important challenges faced by smart cities is incorporating efficient transport/mobility and minimizing traffic congestion. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) prioritization on road networks has become much popular for the completion of specified tasks and the potential of smooth maneuvering. This chapter deals with the design and development of high-prioritized route patterns for AVs considering the actual traffic data and using an Internet of things (IoT) platform. The proposed system architecture uses an IoT cloud. The real-time traffic data from the sensors on the AVs and the traffic light controller are collected in an IoT cloud using wireless communication technologies such as dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) or cellular (4G or 5G). AVs transmit the vehicle state information, and traffic signal controllers transmit the traffic signal data or phase timings to the IoT cloud. The data collected at the IoT cloud is used to compute an optimal route for the AVs. In this study, a microscopic platform has been set up to support several attributes of traffic flow data under various scenarios such as peak time and normal hours in a week. Dynamic vehicle route accounts for traffic data (i.e., how many vehicles are in between the planned path of AVs). In the IoT cloud, traffic data is processed based on the two objectives mentioned, travel times are estimated and an optimal route for AV is determined in virtual environments. The significance of having phase timings information from traffic lights, in addition to estimated travel time, is analyzed. Whenever AV requests the IoT cloud server for the best route to reach the desired destination, at the backend, the updated traffic data is processed and acknowledges the request by sending a message to AV with an optimal route. This work enhances real-time traffic updates in an IoT context to assist AVs. The integrated simulator combines VISSIM (traffic simulator) and MATLAB (application simulator) via component object module (COM) interface. A road network of Ang Mo Kio (AMK) area in Singapore has been built in VISSIM for the simulations. Studies show that using an IoT platform, the travel time of AV can be reduced after reaching the specified destination.