Light Traffic
senseable.mit.edu
Light Traffic
1–10 of 124 posts
Re: Light Traffic
#2This is a cool video, but the paper itself [1] is pretty light. The substance of the paper is basically (from the abstract):
"Despite simulation-based evidence of the potential benefits of SIs [Slot-based Intersections], a comprehensive, analytical framework to compare their relative performance with traffic lights is still lacking. Here, we develop such a framework."
A handful of other quotes from the body examine the rationale and context for investigating this question.
They compare the results of a platooning-type control strategy with a fair scheduling strategy, and the "usual", fixed-cycle strategy, and find that the platooning one, deemed 'BATCH', scales towards the optimal throughput as the number of vehicles increases. There's formulas and graphs to back this up.
This is good work, but the website is a marvellous example of marketing; subtly promoting the higher implications of the work instead of the work itself.
[1] http://senseable.mit.edu/papers/pdf/20160316_Tachet_etal_Rev...
Re: Light Traffic
#3What about pedestrians? For me, a future in which vehicles have more control of our public spaces is worse than the present, no matter the efficiency of the arrangement. Many American cities are notorious for being designed for the automobile, not the human. Let's not double down. More Ramblas!
Re: Light Traffic
#4What about pedestrians? For me, a future in which vehicles have more control of our public spaces is worse than the present, no matter the efficiency of the arrangement. Many American cities are notorious for being designed for the automobile, not the human. Let's not double down. More Ramblas!
Autonomous vehicles are far more deferential to pedestrians than human drivers. It's not even close.
Re: Light Traffic
#5I thought this whole sensor thing a lot in the past, specifically as an argument to criticize the state of our autonomous vehicle development. We must be very careful handling electronic failures and sensor reliability.
I know someone will bring up "well, traditional car will fail and results in fatal crash too, but technology can help us catch that and predict accidents by looking at 360 degree!". True, but let's not let that promise blinds us.
Also, this senor-led, slot-based system won't work in areas like NYC midtown, so not a one-size fits all solution (that's a given). If we exclude accidents and roadworks, then traffic lights, narrow roads, increase of cars on the road (due to ride-sharing and cars becoming more affordable), and double parking, they all contribute to the majority of traffic jam.
Some futuristic fixes include flying cars, roads in mid-air, roads through buildings, and more underpass might help but they don't scale when you keep adding more cars.
We need to improve our mass transit. If you have ever played Skyline or SimCity, you know that intersection sucks and mass transit is preferred over roads. Too many school buses will slow down traffic. Multi-lane to single-lane can jam the road. The NY subway system coverage is pretty good, but each train runs on one lane and is a single point of failure. Kudos to those working in transportation planning though...
Re: Light Traffic
#6What about pedestrians? For me, a future in which vehicles have more control of our public spaces is worse than the present, no matter the efficiency of the arrangement. Many American cities are notorious for being designed for the automobile, not the human. Let's not double down. More Ramblas!
It is kind of funny because pedestrian crossings already kind of work like this in China. The car will never ever stop for you, rather, it will adjust its speed and swerve slightly to avoid a collision (if expected, if unexpected, then its a totally different game). Likewise, the pedestrian is expected to move in a consistent direction and adjust their speed to avoid being in the way of a car. The result is that car traffic and pedestrian traffic can keep moving at the same time even when orthogonal.
Of course, it often doesn't work, and it is only possible at all given the slower vehicle speeds of a congested road network. Also, the flow of pedestrians in China is rather more continuous than in America.
Re: Light Traffic
#7What would people give the odds we achieve a world of autonomous flying drone transport for local travel before a world of autonomous self-driving cars?
It seems right now like we’re really close with self-driving cars but objectively flying ones would be a lot better:
Shorter distances to travel (point to point), easier to implement collision avoidance, faster, no need for this crazy infrastructure we build/maintain of roads, bridges, traffic lights, tunnels, snow plows, street cleaners, etc...
Re: Light Traffic
#8I'm curious if developments like this will mean future cars will not require lights at all. After all, the same communication required for an intelligent traffic intersection like this could just as well be used to exchange breaking, lane changing and position information.
Re: Light Traffic
#9What about pedestrians? For me, a future in which vehicles have more control of our public spaces is worse than the present, no matter the efficiency of the arrangement. Many American cities are notorious for being designed for the automobile, not the human. Let's not double down. More Ramblas!
Autonomous vehicles are far more deferential to pedestrians than human drivers. It's not even close.
Heh. I find it funny that fiction portrays machines wanting to destroy humanity. It may turn out that machines with super human reaction times, never get tired or frustrated, and have infinite patience end up being nicer people than actual people.
Re: Light Traffic
#10I think a short summary is that the researchers are looking at proposing a few different schedulers for intersections with the aim of implementing them with autonomous cars. The results exist in ideal conditions with little thought given to real-world edge cases, what a transition might look like, how cars would coordinate, or if a square intersection is even a good shape for this kind of thing.
My lingering question after reading the paper is the enforcement mechanism. Process scheduling because there's an omnipotent authority with total control over all processes but whatever system is used needs to work with no central control and if all the cars are programmed to be selfish.