Primal decomposition of the optimal coordination of vehicles at traffic intersections

Paper in proceeding, 2016

In this paper we address the problem of coordinating automated vehicles at intersections, which we state as a constrained finite horizon optimal control problem. We present and study the properties of a primal decomposition of the optimal control problem. More specifically, the decomposition consists of an upper problem that allocates occupancy time-slots in the intersection, and lower-level problems delivering control policies for each vehicle. We investigate the continuity class of the upper problem, and show that it can be efficiently tackled using a standard sequential quadratic programming and that most computations can be distributed and performed by the participating vehicles. The paper is concluded with an illustrative numerical example.