Principal Investigator

Ozan Tonguz

Status

Completed

Start Date

Feb. 1, 2012

End Date

Dec. 31, 2013

Project Type

Research Advanced

Grant Program

MAP-21 TSET - Tier 1 (2012 - 2016)

Grant Cycle

2012 TSET UTC

Visibility

Public

Abstract

Increasing the use of information technology (IT) in future vehicles can solve or mitigate many of the fundamental problems we face today in transportation such as energy efficiency, reduced carbon footprint for cars, greener environment, and several others. Specifically, the focus of the proposed work is on making vehicles more intelligent for increasing safety at intersections, mitigating congestion, reducing the commute time of urban workers, increasing productivity of the USA (as well as other countries), increasing the energy efficiency of cars, reducing the carbon footprint of cars, and supporting a greener environment. 

In particular, we propose a new technology which migrate infrastructure-based traffic lights to in car traffic lights, as shown in Figure 2. Using the emerging vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications capability of modern cars through the DSRC standard at 5.9 GHz, it has been shown that this technology can make traffic control ubiquitous at every intersection in urban areas. Through V2V communications, the vehicles at different legs (or approaches) of an intersection can elect a leader which can manage the traffic flow at that intersection, thus acting as a “Virtual Traffic Light”. The results of our investigation in the last three years have shown that this technology can reduce the commute time of urban workers between 40-60% during rush hours which seems pretty significant in terms of reducing accidents at intersections, mitigating congestion, increasing productivity, reducing carbon footprint of cars, increasing the energy-efficiency of transportation, and supporting a greener environment.    

Description

-

Timeline

February 2012 - December 2013

Strategic Description / RD&T

Deployment Plan

http://utc.ices.cmu.edu/utc/Tonguz%20project%20description.pdf 

Expected Outcomes/Impacts

Year 1: (a) Quantify the impact of RF obstructions and communications problems at
intersections on the proposed VTL scheme and propose solutions to these problems;
(b) Develop new algorithms and technologies that will take into account the presence of
pedestrians and cyclists at intersections;
(c) Quantify the severity of the “partial penetration” problem and generate practical solutions
(hardware and software platforms) for addressing the problem.
Year 2: (a) Develop a large-scale simulator using open-source simulators (such as SUMO,
OMNET++, VEINS, ns-2, ns-3, etc.) which will comprise a mobility simulator integrated with a
network simulator and assess the performance of the developed solutions;
(b) Experimental verification of the developed technology and solutions through test beds that
are currently up and running.

Expected Outputs

TRID

Individuals Involved

Email	Name	Affiliation	Role	Position
tonguz@ece.cmu.edu	Tonguz, Ozan	ECE	PI	Faculty - Tenured

Budget

Amount of UTC Funds Awarded

$160659.65

Total Project Budget (from all funding sources)

$160659.65

Documents

Type	Name	Uploaded
Final Report	vehicle_to_vehicle_for_safe_intersections.pdf	April 2, 2018, 4:41 a.m.
Publication	Harnessing vehicular broadcast communications: Dsrc-actuated traffic control	April 19, 2021, 7:47 a.m.
Publication	A self-organizing network approach to priority management at intersections	April 19, 2021, 7:49 a.m.
Publication	Red light, green light—no light: Tomorrow's communicative cars could take turns at intersections	April 19, 2021, 7:50 a.m.

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