Inter-Vehicle Communication Protocol for Cooperatively Capturing and Sharing Intersection Video

For accident prevention at intersections, it is useful for drivers to grasp the position of vehicles in blind spots. This can be achieved without infrastructure if some vehicles passing near the intersection capture and share live video of the intersection through inter-vehicle communications. However, such video streaming requires a congestion control mechanism. In this paper, aiming to let a driver grasp the situation at an intersection, we propose a method to select vehicles that send a video in order to generate a live bird's-eye-view video of the intersection. In our method, each vehicle at an intersection exchanges information with others, such as the sub-areas of the intersection it captures, the quality of its video, and its position and speed. Based on the exchanged information, each vehicle autonomously judges whether it should send its video or not. Through simulation with a QualNet simulator, we confirm that our method achieves a good video arrival rate and video quality sufficient for practical use.