Cooperative Behaviors for the Self-Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles in Space Sharing Conflicts

In real-world multi-agent systems, as in the context of the automatic transportation of goods, autonomous vehicles can face unexpected events like the failure of a vehicle, the presence of obstacles on the road, etc. Such events can generate first local congestions, and then, if they persist, global phenomena and complex traffic congestions (such as traffic jams). We want to manage space sharing conflicts at the local level, when they appear, to allow a quick (real-time) regulation, i.e., without requiring to re-plan the routes of all involved agents. Our approach relies on reactive coordination between vehicles using simple interactions between neighboring agents, using perceptions and little or no communication. We consider in particular a scenario where two queues of vehicles share a single lane, describing the model of the network as well as the agents, and proposing simple coordination rules that only involve the two vehicles at the front of each queue. We then conduct experiments that allow the analysis and the comparison of the proposed self-regulation rules.