Agent-Based Traffic Control Using Auctions
- Author: Heiko Schepperle, Klemens Böhm
- Source: In Eleventh International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2007), Delft, The Netherlands, September 2007.
- Traffic management nowadays is one of the key challenges for cities. One drawback of traditional approaches for traffic management is that they do not consider the different valuations of waiting-time reduction of the drivers. These valuations can differ from driver to driver, e.g., drivers who are late for their job interview have a higher valuation of reduced waiting time than individuals driving home from work routinely. This also applies to trucks with urgent load, e.g., as part of a just-in-time production chain. To overcome this problem, we propose a new mechanism for traffic control at intersections called Initial Time-Slot Auction that is valuation-aware. It relies on agent-based driver-assistance systems to allocate the right to cross an intersection. Our evaluation shows that it does yield a significantly higher overall satisfaction.