Evaluation of a Negotiation Acceptance Scheme in Maneuver Coordination within a Congested Environment

A maneuver coordination service (MCS) is a generic cooperative driving method for connected and automated vehicles. In an MCS, each vehicle periodically broadcasts its planned trajectory by vehicular communication. When a vehicle wants to change its planned trajectory, it can send a desired trajectory and initiate negotiation with surrounding vehicles. A vehicle that receives the desired trajectory decides whether to accept the negotiation and updates its planned trajectory so as not to conflict with the desired trajectory for coordination. Most previous works evaluated MCSs assuming that the number of vehicles is small and that negotiation is always accepted. However, in a congested environment, accepting all negotiations may not be optimal for traffic efficiency because accepting negotiation affects both the negotiation participants and the surrounding vehicles that are not involved in the negotiation. In this paper, we propose a negotiation acceptance scheme in maneuver coordination for efficient traffic. This paper also proposes a utility function that takes the negotiation effect into account. In addition, the agreement phase is incorporated into the negotiation protocol to maintain acceptance consistency among several negotiation participants. Simulation results show that making appropriate settings for the negotiation acceptance scheme improves traffic efficiency in congested environments.