An IoT-Based Framework for Motion Planning of Connected Automated Vehicles at Signal-Free Traffic Intersections

Intersection management is an important problem to improve the traffic efficiency. A novel IoT framework (IoTF) is proposed to control vehicles at a signal-free intersection. An intersection includes the potential path conflict locations, which are represented by a timed Petri net in the IoTF. To ensure safety and efficiency, vehicles driving in the intersection should not occupy the same conflict location at the same time and should not block each other. In the cyberspace, the passing orders of the vehicles are calculated to control vehicles to pass through a signal-free intersection without any collisions and any deadlocks. The cost function aims to minimize the vehicles’ waiting time by optimizing their passing orders. Compared with existing works, 1) the IoTF makes full use of the finite spatial spacing of the intersection; 2) the IoTF are more efficient since they do not involve a complex nonlinear programming problem; 3) and the calculated control strategy aims to optimize the passing order of vehicles arriving at the intersection at each instant, i.e., it is a global optimum solution. The effectiveness of the developed algorithm is demonstrated by the simulation results.