Collaboration and Optimal Conflict Resolution at an Unsignalized Intersection

Safety and efficiency are important priorities in transportation engineering. The new research directions in intelligent transportation systems focus on autonomy and collaboration to improve safety and efficiency. In this paper, we consider the problem of conflict resolution at an unsignalized intersection. Collision detection and avoidance are addressed based on an optimal strategy that uses collaboration between the vehicles. Lagrangian function is used to obtain closed-form solutions. This approach allows analysis of the collaboration process in terms of the cost and the time to resolve conflicts. Several approaches are used for weight assignments including reciprocal and unilateral actions. In this paper, reciprocal collaboration is defined as collaboration with equal costs. It is proven that the minimum cost to resolve any conflict corresponds to equal weights but not to reciprocal collaboration. On the other hand, reciprocal collaboration results in the minimum time to resolve a conflict. The proposed methods present effective solutions to the problem. Results are validated through simulation.