Foresee, a fully distributed self-organized approach for improving traffic flows

Based on traffic data acquisition by the vehicles and inter-vehicle wireless communications, road traffic self-organization has been studied for several years. In this paper we propose a generic model of cooperation among vehicles, which is designed not to saturate the communication medium and to be insensitive to information loss among vehicles. We also propose an original software simulator, which helps us to show how this model can be used in realistic traffic situations. In the simulation, we evaluate one instance of our model, which features an algorithm for limiting the risks of information storms. This feature is particularly interesting in urban settings, where radio communication must fit within the traditional IEEE-802.11 traffic. We show that this algorithm can considerably reduce the amount of communication, without affecting the quality of traffic self-organization.