From ComputerWorld
MIT: In the city of tomorrow, traffic lights will be replaced by intelligent intersections for controlling urban traffic, seamlessly knitting together flows of cars, pedestrians and bikers, researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab said.
Vehicles are being built today, and hundreds of millions will be sold over the next decade, that enable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication.
As vehicles become more wirelessly connected, communicating with each other and the infrastructure around them, traffic lights may become an unecessary impediment in getting from A to B.
Instead of stopping for traffic lights, sensor-laden vehicles would communicate with each other and perform a kind of ballet around each other, according to a new study by MIT.
The study claims this kind of traffic-light-free transportation design, if it ever arrives, could allow twice as much traffic to use existing roads. The greater capacity of the system doesn’t come from vehicles moving more quickly but by creating a more consistent flow at an optimal middle speed, at which automobiles can keep moving.
In just four years, most cars and trucks will be connected to the Internet, according to a report from Gartner Inc. By 2020, 250 million cars will be “connected” through the expansion of high-bandwidth wireless network infrastructure, raising expectations for access to mobile content and better service from smartphones and tablets.
Opening a communication channel to allow wirelessly connected vehicle systems to share information with each other and with roadside infrastructure will make cooperative intelligent traffic systems possible, and pave the way for self-driving vehicles, Gartner said.
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