Self-driving cars withhold the promise of making our roadways safer while improving traffic flow. But before autonomous cars can hit our roads, they first need to learn how to communicate with each other better. That’s why a research team at the University of Cambridge has developed a fleet of mini robot cars that can communicate with each other via WiFi.
On Monday, the researchers released a video showing the mini-robot cars on a two-lane track. The researchers first allowed the cars to circle the track without communicating. They then stopped one vehicle and watched a line of cars form behind it as the vehicles waited for a gap in traffic to switch lanes. With the ability to communicate, though, things changed. As soon as the first car stopped, it alerted the others to the situation. That prompted the cars in the unblocked lanes to adjust their speed to let the cars behind the stopped car easily merge.
According to the Cambridge team, giving the cars the ability to communicate improved traffic flow by up to 35 percent — a sign that today’s AV developers should be working together to ensure all their various systems can communicate.
