Cooperative driving and lane changing at blind crossings

Cooperative driving technology with aid of inter-vehicle communication attracts increasing interests recently. Under cooperative driving guidance, motion of individual, vehicles can be conducted in a more safe and smooth manner. In this paper, cooperative driving at blind crossing (crossing without traffic lights) is studied. A concept named "safe driving patterns" is proposed to represent collision free movements of all encountered vehicles at crossings. The algorithm to determine a "safe driving pattern" is presented, too. The solution space of all allowable movement schedules is then described by a spanning tree in terms of safe driving patterns. Moreover, the corresponding trajectory planning technique considering lane changing around crossings is also discussed.