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Old Posted May 30, 2014, 11:40 PM
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Hatman Hatman is offline
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Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
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This video made the rounds a few years back:
Short Version:
Video Link


Full Version:
Video Link



It was a good start at visualizing how a fully autonomous intersection might work, but there are several criticisms:

1) What road is 12 lanes wide? - Autonomous roadways can be much narrower than current roads due to the decreased following distances of autonomous cars.

2) Autonomous roadways won't need lanes - Autonomous cars also won't need to keep to the right (or left) if traffic conditions require it. (Such as, if there are lots of left turning vehicles, traffic might reconfigure to left-hand running so that the left turns are handled more efficiently)

3) Autonomous cars will not operate as spread out as in this visualization - Autonomous cars will operate in tightly-packed platoons in order to reduce drag.

But even with these considerations, it was a start.

Yesterday I found this simulation of a hybrid intersection system, which can handle both human-driven and computer-driven vehicles.
(Red = "legacy" vehicles and White = autonomous vehicles)

Video Link


I like how the traffic light is smart enough to detect when a human-driven car shows up so that the rest of the time the intersection can operate with full autonomy. It also shows just how many cars that can be handled autonomously vs. manually, as when there is a huge backup of autonomous cars after a 'legacy' car waiting for a red light.

Most of all, this simulation shows what benefits can come during the transition years, even before roadways go fully autonomous.
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