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James Orme writes:

A fleet of driverless cars working together to keep traffic moving smoothly can improve [techerati.com] overall vehicle flow by at least 35%, a study has suggested.

A team of researchers at Cambridge University programmed 16 miniature robotic cars to drive around a two-lane track and observed how the traffic flow changed when one of the cars stopped.

When the cars were not driving co-operatively, any vehicles behind the stopped car had to stop or slow down and wait for a gap in the traffic, as would typically happen on a real road.

A queue quickly formed behind the stopped car and overall traffic flow was slowed.

When the cars were communicating with each other and driving co-operatively, as soon as one car stopped in the inner lane, it sent a signal to all the other vehicles.

Cars in the outer lane that were near to the stopped car slowed down slightly so that vehicles in the inner lane were able to quickly pass the stopped car without having to stop or slow down significantly.

When a human-controlled car was put on the track with the autonomous cars and moved around in an aggressive manner, the other cars were able to give way to avoid the aggressive driver, improving safety.

Source: https://techerati.com/news-hub/driverless-car-fleet-can-reduce-traffic-by-at-least-35-percent-research-suggests/ [techerati.com]

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