A Simulator for Trading Traffic Privileges by Selfish Driving Cars

Connected autonomous vehicles are an important class of cyber-physical systems that are expected to have a major impact on society. Connectivity and autonomy in next-generation automobiles can be leveraged to improve safety and efficiency of our transportation systems. This paper presents a novel approach for incorporating individual driving preferences of vehicles in a computational framework to allow dynamic assignment and transfer of right-of-way privileges between cars as they navigate contested road segments. Dynamic priorities based on time of arrival estimates and positions in queues are used to unambiguously identify the owners of right-of-way privileges to conflict zones at any given time. A mechanism for transferring the privileges from a unique rightful owner to another car, possibly incentivized by using a shared currency, is proposed. A simulation framework using MATLAB® is developed to enable rigorous study of this mechanism across tens of thousands of simulations.