Multi-Vehicle Conflict Management With Status and Intent Sharing Under Time Delays

This paper discusses conflict analysis for multiple vehicles possessing different automation levels. Two different classes of cooperation, enabled by vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, are considered: status-sharing and intent-sharing. Status sharing allows vehicles to exchange their instantaneous states with each other (e.g., current velocity and position), whereas intent sharing also enables information exchange regarding the future motion of vehicles (e.g., velocity and acceleration bounds). We consider two types of time delays, one in vehicle dynamics and the other in V2X communication. Using reachability theory, our conflict analysis framework interprets the information encoded in the wireless messages pertaining to the two different cooperation classes by means of conflict charts. These charts allow for efficient and reliable on-board decision making and control design for a connected automated ego vehicle which interacts with multiple connected remote vehicles when carrying out different maneuvers. We quantify the effects of time delays in a mixed-autonomy traffic environment and unveil the benefits of intent information. Utilizing real highway data, we use numerical simulations to validate the extended conflict management framework.