A V2I communication framework of adaptive traffic lights and a prototype shuttle

With the advent of autonomous shuttles for the first and last-mile commutes in the urban mobility sector, the human driver is either completely absent from the scenario or is less important as compared with the conventional vehicles. Traffic lights have been instrumental in organizing and controlling the traffic by communicating with the drivers in the easiest possible way i.e. by utilizing the sense of sight. This efficiency and effectiveness using visual communication between a human and a device are not analogous to the case of communication among machines. This paper explores the digital communication between the traffic lights and the autonomous vehicles and the interaction between them in real-time based on the feedback received. A vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) network is created to exchange data regarding the position of the vehicle, the state of traffic lights, and related timers. The proposed system cuts red time or skips it entirely based on logic related to time parameters and the current position of the vehicle. Finally, an on-road experiment is performed to test the functioning and responsiveness of the system in real-time, assessing the feasibility of receiving data digitally, and visualizing it on a virtual dashboard implemented on the autonomous vehicle.