An efficient cooperative lane-changing algorithm for sensor- and communication-enabled automated vehicles

A key goal in transportation system is to attain efficient road traffic through minimization of trip time, fuel consumption and pollutant-emission without compromising safety. In dense traffic lane-changes and merging are often key ingredients to cause safety hazards, traffic breakdowns and travel delays. In this paper, we propose an efficient cooperative lane-changing algorithm CLA for sensor- and communication-enabled automated vehicles to reduce the lane-changing bottlenecks. For discretionary lane-changing, we consider the advantages of the subject vehicle, the follower in the current lane and k (an integer) lag vehicles in the target lane to maximize speed gains. Our algorithm simultaneously minimizes the impact of lane-change on traffic flow and the overall trip time, fuel-consumption and pollutant-emission. For mandatory lane-changing CLA dissociates the decision-making point from the actual mandatory lane-changing point and computes a suitable lane-changing slot in order to minimize lane-changing (merging) time. Our algorithm outperforms the potential cooperative lane-changing algorithm MOBIL proposed by Kesting et al. [1] in terms of merging time and rate, waiting time, fuel consumption, average velocity and flow (especially at the point in front of the merging point) at the cost of slightly increased average trip time for the mainroad vehicles compared to MOBIL. We also highlight important directions for further research.