Verified hybrid controllers for automated vehicles

Abstract

The objective of an automated highway system (AHS) is to increase the safety and throughput of the existing highway infrastructure by introducing traffic automation. AHS is an example of a large scale, multiagent complex dynamical system and is ideally suited for a hierarchical hybrid controller. We discuss the design of safe and efficient hybrid controllers for regulation of vehicles on an AHS. We use game theoretic techniques to deal with the multiagent and multiobjective nature of the problem. The result is a hybrid controller that by design guarantees safety, without the need for further verification. The calculations also provide an upper bound on the performance that can be expected in terms of throughput at various levels of centralization.