A self-organizing network approach to priority management at intersections

Prior work has shown that a biologically inspired approach can solve some of the fundamental transportation problems in urban areas. As one instance of this approach, it was shown that vehicles equipped with dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) radios can manage traffic in urban areas in a completely self-organized manner similar to self-organizing biological systems (e.g., ants, birds, and fish). This scheme is known as virtual traffic lights, and its success is enabled by the design of local rules which allow vehicles approaching an intersection to resolve the ensuing conflict in a seamless and self-organized manner without the need for any infrastructure. One important safety issue in urban traffic is how to manage the presence of emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks. In this article, it is shown that by designing a different set of local rules, one can give priority to emergency vehicles at every intersection, thus expediting their response times.