Sharing Traffic Priorities via Cyber–Physical–Social Intelligence: A Lane-Free Autonomous Intersection Management Method in Metaverse

Replacing traffic signals with roadside vehicle-to-infrastructure systems in the era of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) is promising. Managing CAVs in a signal-free intersection, known as autonomous intersection management (AIM), controls the driving behavior of each intersection-traverse CAV to maximize the throughput. Although AIM improves the gross throughput, the fairness of each individual vehicle in its right of way is not seriously considered. This study sets up an AIM system in the cyber–physical–social space to trade traverse priorities quantitatively and fairly. To that end, one needs an AIM method that is optimal and stable, otherwise no convincing trades of traverse priorities could be made. This study proposes a near-optimal lane-free AIM method based on numerical optimal control, wherein log-exp functions are deployed to convexify nondifferentiable collision-avoidance constraints. Besides that, a parameterized social force model (SFM) is proposed to provide a tunable initial guess for numerical optimal control. By tuning the urgency weights in SFM, one may get cooperative trajectories in different homotopy classes, which are further utilized to decide the amount of virtual currency to reward those CAVs who tend to share their traverse priorities. The overall method improves the traverse throughput with individual fairness respected. In experiencing this system, passengers learn how to behave with politeness when they drive manually. Experiments show the efficiency and robustness of the AIM method and also show the efficacy of the overall priority-sharing system.