Towards Reducing Energy Waste through Usage of External Communication of Autonomous Vehicles
The paper addresses the problem of energy waste in autonomous vehicles due to stop-and-go traffic for all road users in urban environments, representing an incremental improvement in traffic management.
This paper proposes using external communication from autonomous vehicles to signal their intent to other road users, aiming to reduce stop-and-go traffic and improve fuel efficiency. The goal is to enable smoother traffic flow, thereby allowing autonomous vehicles to drive more ecologically.
Automated vehicles can implement strategies to drive with optimized fuel efficiency. Therefore, automated driving is seen as a major advancement in tackling climate change. However, with automated vehicles driving in cities and other areas rife with other road users such as human drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists, there is the potential for "stop-and-go" traffic. This would greatly diminish the possibility of automated vehicles to drive fuel-efficient. We suggest using external communication of automated vehicles to aid in ecological driving by providing clues to other road users to show the intent and therefore ultimately enable smoother traffic.