Dynamic Management of Parking Spaces in Road Rest Areas with Automatic Negotiation

Road transport plays a big role in the current society and in the transportation domain. Long distance journeys have restrictions to guarantee road safety. Drivers have restrictions regarding driving times and rest periods. So, they must stop in rest areas. Drivers need real-time information about the most convenient rest area and their parking availability. Furthermore, negotiation is required to coordinate where vehicles are allowed to park to comply with parking time directives. In this paper, a new negotiation protocol is presented to support drivers in the election of an adequate rest area. The negotiation protocol combines a reservation system with a voting-based negotiation. The voting protocol is based on Borda voting system but it includes some modifications to be adjusted to the particularities of the transportation domain. The negotiation protocol has been tested in a real test-bed environment. The results obtained have been positive with respect to a proper distribution among the vehicles involved and the rest areas.