Decentralized Opinion Integrated Decision making at Unsignalized Intersections via Signed Networks

Journal article, 2026

In this letter, we consider the problem of decentralized decision making among connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) at unsignalized intersections. We propose a safe closed-loop opinion-driven decision making model for intersection coordination, where vehicles exchange intent through dual signed networks: a conflict topology based communication network and a commitment-driven belief network, enable cooperation without a centralized coordinator. Continuous opinion states modulate velocity optimizer weights prior to commitment; a closed-form predictive feasibility gate then freezes each vehicle’s decision into a GO or YIELD commitment, which propagates back through the belief network to precondition neighbor behavior ahead of physical conflicts. On average, our policy outperforms both the First-Come-First-Served Policy and a conflict-aware predictive safety gate, with the largest gains observed when feasible gaps arise from heterogeneous conflict sets.