Enhancing Safety at Highway Ramps and Intersections Using Safe Cooperative Controls in Automated Vehicles

Pei-Yu Chang, Sidra Ghayour Bhatti, Nur Uddin Javed, Qadeer Ahmed

Abstract: This article focuses on improving the safety of real-world scenarios such as highway merging and intersections by using cooperative control strategies for automated vehicles (AV s). We utilize a cooperative control approach, integrating a safety filter to ensure that all vehicles can avoid conflicts in challenging environments. A leader-follower pattern is adopted in the framework, ensuring all AV s reach a consistent status with the leader reference AV. The safety filter utilizes control barrier functions (CBF) and a proposed safety set function to derive safe control inputs. To demonstrate the practicality of the safe cooperative framework, the simulation is implemented across three carefully chosen traffic scenarios: highway merging, opposite-direction merging, and a complex four-leg intersection, reflecting the diverse challenges encountered in real-world transportation systems. Implementing the safe cooperative controller achieves zero conflict rates in all three scenarios, demonstrating its effectiveness in preventing conflicts.

External IDs:dblp:conf/itsc/ChangBJA24