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Innovative Traffic Control

In this section three applications are highlighted. The applications show some of the possibilities of cooperative systems technology in different domains.

IRIS, a cooperative safety application

When many vehicles are equipped with cooperative technology it becomes possible to predict accurately the movements of all vehicles. By adding sensors to detect vulnerable road users, it becomes possible to predict dangerous situations and to prevent them. Drivers with an onboard cooperative system can be warned for potentially dangerous situations on their human machine interface (HMI). Furthermore following cars can be warned that the vehicle before them will encounter a dangerous situation. In this way secondary accidents are prevented. In the European Safespot project the IRIS application was developed. IRIS can predict dangerous situations such as a right (or left) turning vehicle intersecting the path of a pedestrian, an emergency vehicle (or other) ignoring a red light, etcetera.

 

 

Cooperative priority at intersections

In some places public transport priority at controlled intersections is quite common. This priority is normally based on identification of the public transport vehicle (passively or through one way communication). With cooperative technology, feedback to the driver can be added to that. The cooperative priority application can indicate to the driver what the best speed is to approach the intersection. In this way unnecessary stops are avoided, fuel is saved and the environment is protected.
 
Moreover, cooperative systems technology can easily extend the traditional priority scheme to more flexible schemes. In the more flexible schemes, a level of priority can be awarded depending on the socio-economic or environmental impact of a vehicle. This will be evaluated in the FREILOT pilot project, where logistics fleets will be prioritised during the off peak hours. Simulations have shown that this can have up to 20% fuel savings for the network, while improving the average travel times.

 

Micro routing: using detailed knowledge of a network to give very accurate advice to drivers

The micro routing application uses cooperative technology to give detailed and accurate advice to individual travellers while keeping the network targets in mind. Micro routing is a distributed application that gathers data about the traffic situation. In particular, the application is able to get detailed information from controlled intersections. The detailed information includes the expected delay and the number of stops. The latter is important for determining the fuel consumption  and the environmental impact of a route.