Auction-based autonomous intersection management

Autonomous vehicles present new opportunities for addressing traffic congestion through flexible traffic control schemes. This paper explores the possibility that auctions could be run at each intersection to determine the order in which drivers perform conflicting movements. While such a scheme would be infeasible for human drivers, autonomous vehicles are capable of quickly and seamlessly bidding on behalf of human passengers. Specifically, this paper investigates applying autonomous vehicle auctions at traditional intersections using stop signs and traffic signals, as well as to autonomous reservation protocols. This paper also addresses the issue of fairness by having a benevolent system agent bid to maintain a reasonable travel time for drivers with low budgets. An implementation of the mechanism in a microscopic simulator is presented, and experiments on city-scale maps are performed.