Saturday, July 24, 2004

Bus door lock No key to forget...   8:43:46 PM     Traffic Control of the Future petra13 writes "A high point of the Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems conference this past week was Kurt Dresner and Peter Stone's paper 'Multiagent Traffic Management: A Reservation-Based Intersection Control Mechanism.' They designed an automated system where cars reserve a time to pass through an intersection as they approach it and are then sped up or slowed down to ensure their arrival at exactly the right time. This allows traffic to enter the intersection from all directions simultaneously, eliminating the need for traffic lights and considerably reducing delays caused by stopping traffic. On their website, you can find Java applet simulations to illustrate the system. Especially impressive looking is the six lanes of heavy traffic in all directions simulation. I would love to see this in real life (from a safe distance of course)." [Slashdot] Very impressive. In Santa Fe this would probably only be useful at a couple of intersections. The intersection of St. Francis and Cerrillos comes to mind... In many cities, however, this could make an amazing difference. If each traffic light delays you by an average of 20 seconds and you have to cross 20 intersections - that's already, why that's almost seven minutes you could have slept longer... I imagine the real advantage of the system would be much lower fuel consumption...   4:45:06 PM

© Copyright 2004 Ottmar Liebert. Last update: 7/29/04; 9:49:04 AM.